MAFIA 2 THE game??

well i have to say mafia was one of the best games i hav ever played and it's still the best.The story and characters just take ur mind at a bash. the whole wan't that easy or hard either.many ppl still r waiting for the sequeal of MAFIA i can't remember the studio name or the developer's one created the game but as far as i knw they from Czech republic.the deveplors announced atleast 2 yrs ago that the MAFIA 2 is in making. but someday later the news came out that it has been cancelled. but now there is no recent news abt this matter. all the mafia fans like me will hav to wait or send mails or check the web to c when it's coming out. But i can tell u abt some interesting game like mafia which r due next month>

1.SCARFACE
2.MADE MAN

i hope these games meet my expections. enjoy gaming !! bye



NOTE: leave ur thoughts abt the games that i mentioned.thank u.

The Bonano crime family

Bonanno, Joseph (1905-): Crime family boss
Although Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno's crime family was, in 1931, the smallest of New York's big five, he still wanted to be the largest power in syndicated crime in America.




Bonanno came to America with his parents from Sicily when he was three years old, but the family returned to their hometown of Castellammare del Golfo. He lived out his teens there, absorbed the Mafia traditions and became an anti-Fascist student radical in Palermo following Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922. Bonanno was forced to flee and reentered America in 1925 after sojourning in Cuba. Although some crime writers say Bonanno went to Chicago and worked under Al Capone, he instead stayed in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in a tight-knit area composed mainly of Castellammarese. He made a mark for himself among the mafiosi as an enforcer who saw to it that Brooklyn speakeasies bought their whiskey from the proper sources. (In Honor Thy Father, a biography of the Bonanno family, Gay Talese writes: "... he did this without resorting to threats and pressure," which would have made Bonanno a most remarkable—and probably a one-of-a-kind—hawker of booze in the era.)
A young man who seized every opportunity he saw, Bonanno grabbed off virgin territories in Brooklyn for the Italian lottery. About 1927 Salvatore Maranzano arrived in America and effectively took over the leadership of the Castellammarese mafiosi. He soon launched a war of supremacy with Joe the Boss Masseria. Bonanno proved to be a dedicated and dependable soldier in that struggle which became known as the Castellammarese War.




Eventually, Masseria was murdered and the war ended—although not by the hands of the Maranzano forces. Masseria was killed by combined Italian and Jewish gangsters who had entirely different plans for the underworld. Lucky Luciano, though serving under
Masseria, had his own thing going with other mobsters, especially with Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky. Together these two envisioned crime operating in peace and the highest possible profitability by "syndicating" or "organizing'' individual crime effort into a national network.




Neither Masseria nor Maranzano, who were closed minded Mustache Petes, wanted to consider working with other gangs, much less with other ethnics. After Maranzano had won the war, he took in Luciano as his number two man, and appointed himself boss of bosses over them all. Neither Luciano nor his followers, including many Young Turks on Maranzano's side whom Luciano secretly courted, cared much for the boss of bosses idea. Luciano vacated the position by having four Lansky gunners assassinate Maranzano less than five months after he'd taken full power.




Luciano kept only the five-family concept and named Bonanno to head up what was originally a large part of Maranzano's Castellammarese crime family. Under Bonanno the crime family's revenues rolled in and he was soon a millionaire. He diversified into a number of businesses and skimmed or covered up the income so adroitly that Internal Revenue could never catch him. Bonanno was into clothing factories and cheese firms and even a funeral parlor. Many police give Bonanno's undertaking activities credit for starting a quaint custom of double-decker coffins, which permitted an extra corpse to be laid under a false bottom to the coffin. It is not known how many missing victims of the Mafia were buried in such communal coffins.




Oddly, although Bonanno was the youngest crime family head in the United States, he was among the most traditional. He took his position as a don—he preferred to call himself the "Father" of his family—most seriously. In his 1983 autobiography, A Man of Honor, Bonanno differentiated the attitudes of himself and Luciano, some think amusingly. Luciano, said Bonanno, was so Americanized that he operated on "the most primitive consideration: making money." On the other hand, Bonanno continued, "Men of my Tradition have always considered wealth a by-product of power." Such men of this tradition, Bonanno explained, "were mainly in the people business."




Whatever business Bonanno considered himself in, it became evident over the years that he thought big. To some rival bosses, upset by his moves beyond his traditional territory, he was "planting flags all over the world."




By the 1960s this was very obvious. Bonanno had long since invaded the open Arizona territory and clearly looked to California where the local mafiosi were not considered serious competition. He had had casino investments with Meyer Lansky in pre-Castro Cuba and was working on going it alone in Haiti. He also worked rackets in Canada, which licensed Buffalo's Stefano Magaddino, who considered much of that country his territory.




By the early 1960s Bonanno for the first time faced some internal opposition from his soldiers who complained he was on the road so much checking out these developments elsewhere that he was neglecting family business in New York and that their revenues were suffering. Some New York bosses were also acting tougher with him, especially after Joe Profaci, who had been another longtime crime family boss in Brooklyn, died of cancer in 1962. Profaci had been Bonanno's staunchest ally, but at the same time controlled Bonanno's raging ambitions in the interests of underworld peace.




Without Profaci's restraint, Bonanno decided to make his big move. Profaci had been succeeded as boss by Joe Magliocco who also feared the other New York bosses. Bonanno approached him with a plan to kill off several other bosses, including Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese in New York, Magaddino in Buffalo and Frank DeSimone in Los Angeles. Magliocco agreed to the plot and passed an order to a previously trustworthy hit man, Joe Colombo, to take out the New York chiefs. The plot collapsed when the ambitious Colombo instead revealed it to the intended victims.




Bonanno and Magliocco were ordered to appear before the Mafia commission, of which they themselves were members, to explain their actions. Bonanno refused to appear but Magliocco did and confessed. As punishment—and it was uncommonly light—Magliocco was allowed to retire from his crime family and be replaced as boss by Colombo. The commission had treated him easy because Magliocco was in poor health and likely to die soon (he did within half a year). Also, by showing leniency the commission was hoping to lure Bonanno in.




It didn't work. Bonanno refused to appear. The commission then ordered him stripped of his crime family authority and replaced him with a Bonanno defector, Gaspar DiGregorio. This split the Bonanno family, some members going with the Bonannos, the others with DiGregorio. In October 1964 Joe Bonanno was kidnapped at gunpoint on Park Avenue while in the company of his lawyer. He was to disappear for 19 months during which time war broke out between the DiGregorio forces and Bonanno's son, Bill. Dubbed the Banana War, it produced a goodly number of corpses but no decision.




Meanwhile Bonanno was being held prisoner by Buffalo's Magaddino who was Bonanno's cousin. Magaddino was clearly acting for the commission and tried to get Bonanno to agree to quit the Mafia and go into retirement. While under constant threat of death, Bonanno reasoned that the commission did not feel on
safe ground but was worried that really bloody warfare could break out. It also did not wish to establish the precedent of the commission dethroning a boss since members might find themselves in the same position in the future.




Finally, Bonanno offered a compromise. He would retire to Arizona and his son would succeed him. The commission would not buy that one, realizing it would still leave Bonanno in effective control. Stalemated, Bonanno at last agreed to quit and accept the commission's decision on his successor.




Bonanno was released; but forcing an agreement out of Bonanno and making him live up to that agreement were two different things. Bonanno threw himself into the Banana War. The commission had in the meantime replaced the ineffective DiGregorio with a tougher man, Paul Sciacca, but he was no match against the wily elder Bonanno. In the ensuing killings the Bonanno forces inflicted more damage than they received. It is doubtful the commission could ever have won the Banana War, but in 1968 Bonanno suffered a heart attack and was forced into real retirement.




This time an effective compromise was worked out. Bonanno went to Arizona and was allowed to maintain his western interests while giving up the Bonanno holdings in New York. It marked the end of an era. Bonanno was the last of the five original bosses of the 1931 American Mafia still living, but he was now out of action as well.




Bonanno nevertheless remained in the news. He was prosecuted and convicted on some criminal charges and in the mid-1980s the federal government sought to make use of his autobiography to prove that there was a Mafia commission and that its present members were part of a criminal conspiracy and thus could be sent to prison. When the aging and ailing Bonanno refused to answer questions to a grand jury about the revelations in his book, he was jailed.







safe ground but was worried that really bloody warfare could break out. It also did not wish to establish the precedent of the commission dethroning a boss since members might find themselves in the same position in the future.




Finally, Bonanno offered a compromise. He would retire to Arizona and his son would succeed him. The commission would not buy that one, realizing it would still leave Bonanno in effective control. Stalemated, Bonanno at last agreed to quit and accept the commission's decision on his successor.




Bonanno was released; but forcing an agreement out of Bonanno and making him live up to that agreement were two different things. Bonanno threw himself into the Banana War. The commission had in the meantime replaced the ineffective DiGregorio with a tougher man, Paul Sciacca, but he was no match against the wily elder Bonanno. In the ensuing killings the Bonanno forces inflicted more damage than they received. It is doubtful the commission could ever have won the Banana War, but in 1968 Bonanno suffered a heart attack and was forced into real retirement.




This time an effective compromise was worked out. Bonanno went to Arizona and was allowed to maintain his western interests while giving up the Bonanno holdings in New York. It marked the end of an era. Bonanno was the last of the five original bosses of the 1931 American Mafia still living, but he was now out of action as well.




Bonanno nevertheless remained in the news. He was prosecuted and convicted on some criminal charges and in the mid-1980s the federal government sought to make use of his autobiography to prove that there was a Mafia commission and that its present members were part of a criminal conspiracy and thus could be sent to prison. When the aging and ailing Bonanno refused to answer questions to a grand jury about the revelations in his book, he was jailed.
Bonanno Crime Family
Although Joe Bonanno has been out of power since the mid-1960s, the family he ran for some three and a half decades is still known by his name, not because of a patrilineal succession, but rather because of inept successors.




Bonanno was put in charge of his Brooklyn family on the assassination of Salvatore Maranzano in 1931. He was at the time only 26 years old, the youngest crime family boss in the country. Traditionally his was one of the smaller of the New York families, but it was for a number of years very tight-knit and extremely profitable under Bonanno. Because of its limited manpower, Bonanno over the years sought consistently to ally himself with another crime boss or two to cement his position. Until they fell out much later, he could rely on support from his cousin Stefano Magaddino, the head of the Buffalo crime family, and in Brooklyn from Joe Profaci, with whom he remained very tight until Profaci's death in 1962. Under Bonanno the major sources of crime revenue derived from numbers, the Italian lottery, bookmaking, loan-sharking and, although he always denied it, narcotics. But when Bonanno underboss Carmine Galante went to prison in the early 1960s, it was for his involvement in drug trafficking, and to this very day the Bonanno family is regarded as one of the major suppliers of drugs to New York City.





By the time of Profaci's death in 1962 Bonanno had become convinced that some of the other family chiefs—especially Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese and even his cousin Magaddino—were plotting his downfall. Feeling isolated, Bonanno developed a counterplot to kill those three and apparently a few other crime leaders around the country. It was viewed as an effort by Bonanno to become a new "Boss of Bosses." Allied with Bonanno was the ailing Joseph Magliocco, the successor to Profaci, and the uncle of Bonanno's eldest son's wife. The plot blew up when Magliocco passed the contract for the hits on Gambino and Lucchese to one of his most proficient hit men, Joe Colombo, who in turn sold out to the other side.




Called before the national commission Magliocco confessed and was allowed to retire from his crime family. (He was in extremely poor health and sure to die shortly.) Bonanno however admitted nothing and refused to appear. Instead, he disappeared and seemed to be concentrating his efforts on expanding the crime family's interests in Arizona, Canada and elsewhere.




Advancing in age himself, Bonanno had already started boosting his son Bill to become the active head of the family, a move that brought stiff resistance within the Bonanno organization, many of whose members felt Bill was incapable of the task. By that time many of the mobsters had become disenchanted with Bonanno's rule in general, feeling his interest in expanding elsewhere was adversely affecting their bread-and-butter—the Brooklyn operations.




Backed by the national commission or, perhaps more accurately, rammed in as family head was Gaspar DiGregorio. The commission ruled that Bonanno by his treachery had lost all rights. As a result a split developed within the family, about half the members going with DiGregorio and the rest with Bill Bonanno. In October 1964 the elder Bonanno was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of a luxury apartment house on Park Avenue. It was unclear whether it was an arranged disappearance by Bonanno, who was due to go before a federal grand jury, or the work of the rival crime families. In any event, Bill Bonanno was on his own. The result was the Banana War, "Banana" being a pet journalistic corruption of the Bonanno name.




In January 1966 the DiGregorio forces lured Bill Bonanno and some of his supporters with the promise of a peace meeting into an ambush and then bungled the attempted assassination. Although well over 100 shots were fired nobody was so much as scratched. Dissatisfied by DiGregorio's inability to handle the war, the commission forced him out in favor of Paul Sciacca, a tougher man and a close friend of Gambino.




In May, however, Joe Bonanno reappeared, refusing to say where he had been the past 19 months. It appeared he had been held by the commission and had only been released on his promise he would leave the crime family permanently and retire to Arizona. Bonanno did no such thing, instead prosecuting the Banana War. The Sciacca forces did not give anywhere near as good as they got, many more falling to Bonanno gunners than the other way around. A heart attack in 1968 finally slowed Bonanno and he shifted back to Arizona while the Banana War petered out. Bonanno held on to his western interests while the Brooklyn holdings shifted to Sciacca, later to Natale Evola and finally to Phil Rastelli.




The national commission's dream, or at least Gambino's dream, of a subservient Bonanno crime family was shattered by the return of Carmine Galante, who quickly took over affairs. If the commission was upset with Bonanno, it was especially unhappy with Galante—all the more so after Gambino died in 1976. Newspaper talk settled on Galante becoming the new boss of bosses, but he was assassinated by the combined agreement not only of all the New York crime families but also of many key dons around the country. It was said that even the hated Bonanno was consulted before Galante was eliminated.




Returning as ruler after Galante was Philip "Rusty" Rastelli. Under him the organization's principal activities were described as home video pornography, pizza parlors (regarded as an excellent business in which to hide illegal aliens), espresso cafes, restaurants and a very large narcotics operation. But Rastelli seemed by the mid-1980s to be in less than total control as one segment of the family pushed it deeper into drug trafficking. With Rastelli facing a long prison term in 1986, he was said by law officials to have placed Joseph Massino in charge of family affairs.




By 1998, under Massino, the Bonanno family was thriving. While the overall strength of the five New York families was said to have been declining, there was no doubt that, much to the chagrin of law enforcement, the Bonannos were clearly gaining strength. The crime family that had been in much disgrace following the Galante period and had even been booted off the National Commission made a remarkable recovery with about 100 active wise guys and was fast approaching the Gambinos under the imprisoned John Gotti as the country's second-most-dangerous Mafia faction.

Frank Bompensiero

Bompensiero, Frank "Bomp" (1905–1977): Hit man, San Diego crime boss and FBI informer
In the treacherous world of Mafia hit men, few characters proved shiftier than Frank "Bomp" Bompensiero. Bomp was at the same time a pitiless killer and an FBI informer who betrayed his friends to the FBI and in the end was betrayed by that agency to a certain death at the murderous hands of the mob.




For decades regarded as one of the most efficient hit men in the West Coast mob, Bompensiero was an expert in the so-called Italian rope trick, a surprise garroting that always left the dying victim with a surprised look on his face.




For double-dealing, Bompensiero was without peer. Once the Detroit mob gave him a murder contract involving one of two crime figures who had each approached the leadership with demands that the other be killed. The leadership discussed the matter at a sitdown and decided which man should get it. Bomp was informed and at a party he immediately approached the victim to be, whom he happened to know, and told him, "Look here, you've been having this problem and the old man's given me the contract. I'm going to clip this guy but I'm going to need your help."




Naturally the man was eager to be of aid and was overjoyed when told to help dig a hole for the body in advance. Bomp picked out a lonely spot and they took turns digging. Finally the man asked Bomp if the hole was deep enough. Bomp announced it was perfect and shot his victim in the back of the head.




Bomp was especially close to the late Los Angeles crime boss Jack Dragna and ran a number of rackets with him in San Diego, where he eventually became the chief of the L.A. family's rackets in that city. During the last 10 years of his life, Bomp turned stool pigeon for
the FBI after he was charged with conspiracy to defraud. The case was dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence after the FBI "turned" Bomp and thereafter Bomp supplied federal officials with a wealth of information about mob activities.




Not that Bomp played straight with the FBI. He continued his own crimes which apparently included the murder of a wealthy San Diego real estate broker, Mrs. Tamara Rand, who had close ties with gangster elements in Las Vegas. Many observers found it inconceivable that the FBI did not learn of Bomp's involvement in the matter. But Bomp had outsmarted himself. He had become a doomed man. Suddenly the L.A. mob put out a contract on him, but Bomp was not an easy man to kill, not a man to be trapped easily. To allay his suspicions the L.A. mob appointed Bomp to the post of consigliere in the hope of catching him off guard. Amazingly, for two years, nothing happened. Even among friends or supposed friends Bomp was on the alert. Nobody could get at him without very obviously being killed in the process.




Finally the FBI had Bomp lead a number of L.A. mobsters into contact with a porno outfit that was really an agency front. When the agency made a number of arrests it had to be apparent to Bomp that he was being tossed to the wolves. Apparently, the FBI concocted the scheme in an effort to draw Jimmy Fratianno into their informer net and, by dooming Bompensiero, they got their way. Now branded by the L.A. family as a stoolie, Bomp still continued to survive—for a time. He stayed close to home, leaving his expensive Pacific Beach apartment only to make his rounds of telephone calls from a phone booth because he was sure his home phone was tapped. Finally, in February 1977, 10 years after Bomp started dealing with the FBI, unknown gunmen caught up with him as he was returning from a phone booth and pumped four bullets into his head with a silencer-equipped automatic pistol.

Willie Morris Bioff

Bioff, Willie Morris (1900–1955): Movie extortionist and stool pigeon
In his 55 years Willie Bioff enjoyed many unsavory careers. He was a pimp, a procurer, a strongarm man, a labor racketeer, a stool pigeon, and a friend of leading politicians. But his chief claim to fame was as a Hollywood extortionist, shaking down tough-minded movie moguls, making them quake with fear. It was said that Louis B. Mayer was convinced that Bioff would kill him as readily as he would look at him.




Bioff's life of crime started when he was 10 years old. He lined up some girls and sold their favors atop a pool table to other schoolboys. By the time he was 16, he was a full-scale procurer with a string of hookers working for him in the Levee, Chicago's worst vice area. For a time he worked with Harry Guzik, another notorious procurer, and as such came in contact with the Capone mob. Harry Guzik was the brother of Jake Guzik, Al Capone's closest gang ally, who saw in Bioff greater talents. A man who could whack around prostitutes might well be able to intimidate others. There was plenty of room in the mob's shakedown and union rackets for a man with the brutal talents of beefy Willie Bioff.




Bioff proved he could be a very convincing union slugger and it was decided to put him on more lucrative assignments. Jake Guzik recommended Bioff to Frank Nitti who was running the mob after Capone's imprisonment for income tax violations. Nitti assigned Bioff to provide muscle power for George Browne whom the mob was promoting from a local union power to presidency of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators. The election was in the bag. Chicago was solid for Browne, and in New York Lucky Luciano and Louis Lepke lined up strong support for him as did Al Polizzi in Cleveland.




Bioff became Browne's watchdog. Together the pair at first split 50 percent of all monies they were able to shake out of the movie industry, with the rest going to the Chicago Outfit. Later Browne and Bioff's share was cut to 25 percent, but by then the pie was enormous and they never noticed any loss. Through Bioff and Browne the Chicago mob just about controlled the Hollywood movie industry in the 1930s. In 1936 Bioff informed the head of Loew's, Inc.: "Now your industry is a prosperous industry and I must get two million dollars out of it." They actually did get a million over the next four years.




A later court trial demonstrated Bioff's negotiating ability. He was dealing with Jack Miller, labor representative for an association of Chicago movie exhibitors.






Bioff: "I told Miller the exhibitors ... would have to have two operators in each booth. Miller said: 'My God! That will close up all my shows."






Prosecutor: "And what did you say?"






Bioff: "I said: 'If that will kill grandma—then grandma must die.' Miller said that two men in each booth would cost about $500,000 a year. So I said, well, why don't you make a deal? And we finally agreed on $60,000".






Judge John Bright: "What was this $60,000 paid for?"






Bioff (beaming): "Why, Your Honor, to keep the booth costs down ... You see, Judge, if they wouldn't pay we'd give them lots of trouble. We'd put them out of business and I mean out."




This trial came about after a right-wing, crusading newspaper columnist, Westbrook Pegler, started digging into Bioff's activities. Pegler discovered Bioff as the "guest of honor" at a lavish Hollywood party and remembered him as a venal little panderer during his own apprentice reporter days in Chicago. When Pegler started attacking Bioff in print, the latter tried to counter by attacking Pegler's anti-unionism. It didn't wash. Pegler pointed out Bioff had served jail sentences for brutalizing his prostitutes but had in one case not served a six-month sentence, not an unusual situation in a corrupt Chicago law enforcement system. Ultimately, Bioff was forced to do that time, but did it in true crime syndicate style—with a private office in the Chicago House of Correction and a tub of iced beer daily.




Pegler's newspaper assaults finally got Bioff and Browne convicted in 1941 for violation of anti-
racketeering laws, and each was sentenced to 10 years. Both men broke under that pressure and agreed to testify against many top leaders of the Chicago Syndicate, among them Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca, Phil D'Andrea, Charlie Gioe, Lou Kaufman and Johnny Roselli.




The defense constantly attacked Bioff's character and his lying testimony before several grand juries. Bioff shook his head when asked to explain himself and said, "I am just a low, uncouth person. I'm a low-type sort of man."




Bioff and Browne's testimony convicted the Chicago crime leaders who went to prison. Nitti was an exception. Fearful of having to do time, the supposed tough successor to Al Capone committed suicide. As the syndicate gangsters entered prison, Bioff and Browne went out. They ran for their lives.




No one ever learned where Browne went. It turned out Bioff had gone to Phoenix, Arizona, after a time, living under the name of William Nelson.




Bioff had tasted power in his Hollywood days, and it was not an appetite he could give up readily. In 1952 Bioff and wife contributed $5,000 to the senatorial campaign of a department store heir named Barry Goldwater. After the election a warm friendship blossomed between the Arizona senator and Bioff-Nelson. In the meantime Bioff also went to work for Gus Greenbaum who was running the Riviera in Las Vegas. It was an unhappy coincidence, since the Riviera was secretly backed by the Chicago Outfit, and the very gangsters that Bioff had sent to prison. It was only a matter of time until the boys in Chicago learned who Willie Nelson was. In October 1955, Goldwater, an accomplished air force pilot, ferried Bioff and his wife to Las Vegas and back to Phoenix in his private plane. On November 4, 1955, Bioff left his house, climbed into his small pickup truck, and waved to his wife who was looking out the kitchen door. When Bioff stepped on the starter, there was a terrific explosion. Pieces of the truck flew in every direction. A little late perhaps, but Chicago had avenged Bioff's betrayal.




A few years later Gus Greenbaum and his wife were murdered in very brutal fashion. Yes, Greenbaum was stealing the mob's casino money, but it was also true that the boys had never really forgiven him for giving the hated Bioff a haven.

Ruggiero Boiardo

Boiardo, Ruggiero "Richie the Boot" (1891–1984): New Jersey Mafia patriarch

Ruggiero Boiardo may have been the oldest mafioso the law ever tried to bring to trial on organized crime charges. At 89, the state had indicted him in the "Great Mob Trial," an operation instigated by the state of New Jersey to prove the existence of an organized crime network. Richie the Boot Boiardo had been facing a variety of charges—including racketeering, extortion and murder conspiracy—but was released because, it was ruled, his health was too poor for him to stand trial. Richie the Boot told the court he just wanted "St. Peter to bring me to heaven." So the white-haired, hobbled mob boss went back behind the walls of his 30-room estate in Livingston, where he continued for another four years to conduct much of his business from a small vegetable spread that bore the sign: "Godfather's Garden." And authorities kept calling him the patriarch of organized crime in New Jersey.




Born in Italy, Boiardo came to Chicago at the turn of the century when he was nine. In 1910 he was working as a mason in Newark, New Jersey. Bootlegging during Prohibition made Boiardo a big man in Newark, and he established himself as a sort of godfather of the First Ward where he developed a philanthropic side, and entire families came to him in times of need. He satisfied the political elements because people in his area voted the way he thought best.




Police labeled him a gang leader but Boiardo avoided trouble and for a long time was never arrested for anything serious enough to send him to jail. He did have to fight off incursions by other gangsters, however, and to his dying day carried the remains of shotgun pellets that lodged in his chest during a gun battle. By 1930 he had become an associate of Abner "Longy" Zwillman, who was known as "the Al Capone of New Jersey." Through the 1930s and later Boiardo was connected by state and federal investigators with bootlegging, numbers and lottery rackets. His good fortune with the law ended when he did 22 months in jail on a concealed weapons charge.




In theory Boiardo "retired" from all criminal activities in 1941. He moved to a lavish estate in Livingston, the main house constructed of stone imported from Italy. Like the domain of a powerful feudal lord, the estate sported wrought-iron gates, fountains, mosaics, a collection of sculpted busts of the Boiardo family and an impressive statue of Richie the Boot riding a white stallion.




In the 1950s it was clear that Boiardo was still heavily involved in mob gambling and loan-sharking activities; in 1963 informer Joe Valachi named Boiardo as a power in the "Cosa Nostra" or Mafia crime syndicate. Boiardo denied it all, insisting he was just an avid gardener and proud grandfather. However, in the 1980s he escaped prosecution only because of his age. The man who law enforcement officials called the patriarch, one of the most powerful and feared men in the state's underworld, died in November 1984 at the age of 93, still said to be a kingpin in gambling and extortion operations in Essex County.

Otto Berman

Berman, Otto "Abbadabba" (1880–1935): Policy game fixer
Before Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky realized how lucrative it was, Dutch Schultz had in the early 1930s found the way to fix the numbers racket in order to control the winning digits.




Avaricious to the core, Schultz did not like the fact that policy produced a mere 40 percent profit on the money gambled. Every paid-off winner grieved Dutch. If he could only find a way to fix the results, he realized, he could greatly increase profits.




Schultz took over the Harlem rackets, business concerns that took off thanks to a mathematical "magician" named Otto Berman, "Abbadabba." At that time the numbers were determined by the betting statistics at various race tracks. It was impossible for the mob to control the figures at the New York tracks, but when those tracks were closed the numbers were based on the results from tracks that the underworld had successfully infiltrated, such as Chicago's Hawthorne, Cincinnati's Coney Island and New Orleans's Fair Grounds. Berman worked out a system whereby aides could pour money in on some races to manipulate the payoff number. It was believed that Abbadabba's mathematical wizardry added 10 percent to every million dollars a day the mob took in.




Dutch Schultz, noted as being one of the stingiest crime bosses in New York, paid his top gangster aides—men like Lulu Rosenkrantz and Abe Landau—something like $1,200 a week. By contrast he paid Abbadabba $10,000.




In 1935 a vote by the syndicate's national commission passed the death sentence on Dutch Schultz after he announced plans to bump off Thomas E. Dewey. Then a racket-busting prosecutor, Dewey was closing in on Schultz. The other top mobsters in the syndicate, men like Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Louis Lepke and Joe Adonis, felt that such a killing would cause a widespread crackdown in which they would all be hurt. So much for criminal statesmanship. It was also a fact that all the mobsters were eager to cut in on Schultz's rackets.




On October 23, 1935, Schultz and two bodyguards, Landau and Rosenkrantz, arrived at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. A three-man syndicate hit squad was dispatched to take care of them. Unfortunately, another late arrival joined the Schultz party. It was Abbadabba Berman.




All four were shot to death, Abbadabba included. A final testament to the skills of the magician was contained in the papers the quartet had been going over. They indicated that over a certain period of time the Schultz policy banks had taken in $827,253.43 in bets and paid out only $313,711.99. The difference between that last figure and the approximately $500,000 which should have been paid out to winners was attributed to Abbadabba Berman's skills.




His demise cost the syndicate literally millions of dollars annually. For a time others tried to imitate Berman's technique—as much as could be figured out—but none came within a fraction of his results. Even Vito Genovese, probably the most anti-Semitic crime bigwig in the syndicate, mourned the passing of "the Yid adding machine."




Bilotti, Thomas (1940–1985): Castellano aide and murder victim
A rule of thumb: The assassination of a top aide of a Mafia boss often presages the boss's murder. The reason: It usually weakens the boss and at the same time eliminates a figure who, if he survives, could rally the crime family to his side.




Thomas Bilotti didn't exactly fit the pattern. Clearly he had moved up to top aide of Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino crime family. On the natural death of underboss Aniello Dellacroce (no close ally of Castellano) on December 2, 1985, Bilotti was slated to succeed as No. 2 man in the family—the eventual, logical successor to Castellano.




Under Castellano the Gambino family had been divided into two less than friendly camps. Before his death, Carlo Gambino, who wanted his brother-in-law Castellano to succeed him over the underboss Dellacroce, won his way by giving Dellacroce control of most of the crime family's Manhattan rackets. Dellacroce gained the allegiance of a number of Young Turks, especially John Gotti, said at the time to control the organization's rackets at JFK airport. Gotti, who idolized the murderous Albert Anastasia (a previous boss of the family), was clearly viewed as the ailing Dellacroce's successor and as such the logical heir to the position of underboss. The problem that arose within the Gambino family was that by December 1985 there were two logical heirs to the throne—obviously one too many.




Castellano had cast about among his supporters for someone deemed capable of standing up to the fiery and vicious Gotti. He came up with Bilotti and promoted him to the position of capo—in line with Gotti. What Castellano liked best about Bilotti was his toughness; he was known to smash opponents over the head with a baseball bat as a way of ending disputes. With the 70- year-old Castellano under several indictments and likely facing a long imprisonment, it appeared that Bilotti would jump over Gotti.




But, on December 16, 1985—two weeks to the day after underboss Dellacroce died—Castellano and Bilotti stepped from a limousine on New York's East 46th Street near the Sparks Steak House, where they had reservations to dine with three unknown individuals. The three men who showed up on the sidewalk carried semi-automatic weapons under their trenchcoats and put six bullets each in Castellano and his protégé.




For a time authorities believed the motive was to kill Castellano, and Bilotti had to go just because he was there. However, after a period of gleaning information from informers and through electronic eavesdropping, investigators concluded that the Gotti faction had marked Bilotti as a primary target.




Bilotti, it was theorized, was not taken out first, according to custom, since it would alert both Castellano and the authorities. A protective ring would surround Castellano and make him harder to kill. Castellano and Bilotti had to go together.




In the shifting eddies that mark Mafia power struggles, there are a few who make it to the top and some like Tommy Bilotti who are stopped just short.




See also: Castellano, Paul.




Binaggio, Charles (1909–1950): Kansas City political-criminal leader
The murder of Charley Binaggio, the political and criminal boss of Kansas City and real successor to Tom Pendergast, was arguably the most important killing in decades. Although the underworld itself might number many other homicides—that of O'Banion, Rothstein, Masseria, Marazano, Schultz, Reles and Siegel, to name a few—as far more momentous, from the view of law and order, the April 6, 1950, killing of Binaggio and his "enforcer," Charley Gargotta, is paramount. Without those murders it is entirely possible that the famed Kefauver hearings might never have come about.




Even Kansas City, which had seen almost everything during the heyday of the Pendergast Machine, was shocked. Binaggio, at age 41, was found dead, shot four times in the head and stretched out in a swivel chair at his headquarters at the First District Democratic Club. Gargotta, a vicious muscleman and killer, lay on the floor nearby, the same number of bullet wounds in his head. Looking down on the scene were large portraits of President Harry Truman and Governor Forrest Smith, a man for whose recent election Binaggio took much credit.




The method of execution told much about Binaggio, who law enforcement men would speculate was an actual member of the Mafia—and if so, the highest ranked mafioso on any political ladder, a political boss on the brink of national importance.




In death there could be no doubt he had been subjected to Mafia violence. The bullet wounds in the heads of both men were arranged in two straight rows, forming "two deuces." This is called Little Joe in dice parlance, and it has long been the mob's sign for a welsher. When used in a murder it indicates the mob not only did the job but also wanted everyone to know it. Clearly, Binaggio had welshed to the crime syndicate and he was paying for it.




Binaggio was considered a political "comer," steeped in scandal perhaps, but likely to overcome such trivialities through the exercise of raw power. Born in Texas, Binaggio was a drifter with arrests in Denver for vagrancy and carrying a concealed weapon. He landed in Kansas City at 23 and joined the operations of North Side leader Johnny Lazia, probably through the sponsorship of mafioso Jim Balestrere. Lazia delivered the votes of the North Side to Democratic boss Pendergast and was in turn allowed to control all gambling, racing wires, liquor and vice in the area.




Lazia was murdered in 1934 after he got into tax trouble and made signs of informing against the machine in exchange for gentle treatment. This left the way clear for Binaggio's climb up the criminal ladder. By the early 1940s, Binaggio had a lock on the North Side while the Pendergast machine was foundering.




In 1946 President Truman ordered a purge of Congressman Roger C. Slaughter who was consistently voting against the administration. Truman called in Jim Pendergast, the late Tom's nephew successor, and ordered him to get the nomination for Enos Axtell. Slaughter was defeated but the Kansas City Star uncovered evidence of wholesale ballot fraud. In the ensuing investigations, a woman election watcher was shot to death on the porch of her home. And just before critical state hearings were scheduled to begin, the safe at City Hall went up in a huge dynamite blast that destroyed the fraudulent ballot evidence.




Binaggio, everyone suspected but could not prove, was the brain behind both the ballot fraud and the City Hall bombing. As a result, only one minor hanger-on, Snags Klein, was punished with a short prison term for the crime.




Now Binaggio was ready to make his move for supremacy against Jim Pendergast. Pendergast was nowhere near as astute as his late uncle and, by 1948, Kansas City, politically and criminally, belonged to Binaggio. However, Binaggio needed a political slush fund to wipe out the Pendergast forces and he appealed to Mafia crime families around the country for financial aid. Many responded, Chicago most generously. More than $200,000 came in from the underworld in exchange for Binaggio's promise that once he got his man in the governorship both Kansas City and St. Louis would become "wide open" for syndicate operations.




Binaggio backed Forrest Smith for the office and Smith won. There was no hard evidence, however, that Binaggio had funneled something like $150,000 into Smith's campaign. But the other crime families had put up the money and expected results. Binaggio failed to deliver. A St. Louis newspaper broke the story about the understanding Binaggio had with the underworld and the St. Louis police commissioner blocked all efforts to open up the city.




Binaggio stalled for time on his deal. It wouldn't wash with the mob. They were troubled with thoughts that Binaggio had merely backed the winner and hadn't put up the money they had advanced him. Like true businessmen the crime families wrote off their investment. They also wrote off Binaggio and Gargotta. Little Joe was the warning to others not to try the same thing.

Jose Miguel Battle

Battle, Jose Miguel, Sr. (?-): Cuban-American godfather
Much is made of the so-called Cuban Mafia as potent new force on the criminal scene in America. More correctly it should be viewed as an adjunct on franchise operation of organized crime. In the New York-New Jersey area the Cuban-American racketeers operate a $45-million-a-year illegal gambling syndicate that has been dubbed "the Corporation."




According to the President's Commission on Organized Crime, the "godfather" of the Corporation is Jose Miguel Battle Sr., a former Havana anti-vice officer—in the days when Meyer Lansky dominated the vice scene in Cuba—who was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to play a major role in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Battle had lived in Union City, New Jersey, and since then has made his home in Miami.




Sworn testimony before the commission indicated that about 2,500 people in New York City worked for the crime group. One informer testified that the Corporation established a foothold in New York through Cuban and other Hispanic-owned groceries and bars. The Corporation's "enforcer" dealt harshly with competitors, assigning men to "kill the people and burn down their stores." He said 10 to 15 other people, not the targets of the hit men, died in such arson incidents.




A profile of the Corporation as sketched by the President's Commission showed it to control legitimate finance and mortgage companies, banks, travel agencies and real estate companies worth "several hundred million dollars." The value of such holdings is that they permit laundering of funds by creating non-existent sales to explain illegitimate income. The Corporation is also big in laundering money through the Puerto Rico lottery, buying up the tickets of big winners for more than real value and then cashing the tickets.




One of the more fanciful tales told by some journalists is that this new activity of the Cuban Mafia is part of the process of replacing and even killing off the traditional mafiosi. The President's Commission demonstrated this was nonsense, pointing out that the Corporation under Battle paid the Mafia a fee to run illegal numbers in its territory of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and northern New Jersey.




Cooperation is the operative word in gambling deals between the Latinos and the mafiosi, as it is in narcotics. Organized crime, unlike big business, is not subject to "takeover bids." Only franchisees need apply.

Sam Battaglia

Battaglia, Sam "Teets" (1908–1973): Chicago Outfit's narcotics overlord
For many years during the reign of Sam Giancana as boss of the Chicago Outfit, Sam "Teets" Battaglia was regarded as his heir-apparent. Battaglia was also considered Giancana's narcotics overlord, belying the claim by some, including informer Joe Valachi, that Chicago had an edict against dealing in drugs. The fact was that narcotics was so important in mob economics that traffickers had to have approval to operate. Battaglia dispensed or withheld such rights and permission.




Battaglia and Giancana had climbed a long road up from Chicago's notorious juvenile 42 Gang of the late 1920s. Battaglia succeeded because he always exhibited the same vicious outlook as his mentor. In 1924, at age 16, he was arrested for burglary. In all he accumulated more than 25 arrests for burglary, larceny, robbery, assault and attempted murder. He was considered the prime suspect in at least seven homicides.




The simple recitation of Battaglia's criminal record does not capture his essential zaniness. Battaglia—nicknamed "Teets" because of his muscular chest—first came to the public's attention for a bizarre crime in 1930. He was arrested for robbing at gunpoint the wife of the mayor of Chicago, Mrs. William Hale Thompson, of her jewels worth $15,500. Rubbing it in, Teets marched off with the gun and badge of her policeman chauffeur. However, a hitch developed in the police case when a positive identification could not be made and Teets insisted he was watching a movie when the robbery occurred. He also produced a half dozen witnesses who said they were watching him watch the movie.




The robbery took place on November 17 and until the end of the year Teets was a busy criminal, being involved in one fatal killing and one attempted killing. Such remarkable exploits attracted the favorable attention of Capone mobsters and, like Giancana, Teets was on the rise. By the 1950s he was involved in, besides narcotics, mob extortion, burglary, fraud and murders. He was also the king of much of the mob's loan shark activities and sat as a "judge" in "debtors court" held in the basement of Casa Madrid. Here Battaglia heard the cases of delinquent juice victims and meted out the appropriate penalties, either severe beatings or death.




Battaglia, a hoodlum with far more brawn than brain, became a major success in organized crime. He was a millionaire several times over and owned a luxurious horse-breeding farm and country estate in Kane County, Illinois. In the mid-1960s when the elders in the Chicago Outfit, Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo, decided that Giancana had to be downgraded in authority because of the intense heat he was taking, Giancana wanted Battaglia named as his successor. In that fashion, Giancana knew, he would maintain effective control of the organization. However, Ricca and Accardo decided they favored instead the duo of Cicero boss Joey Aiuppa and Jackie the Lackey Cerone.




The mob infighting on the succession resolved itself in 1967 when Teets was finally ushered off to prison for 15 years on an extortion conviction. He died six years later. It has been suggested by some crime experts that there was no way Sam Giancana could be forcibly removed from the Chicago crime scene until three of his murderous followers had first vanished. The trio were Teets Battaglia, Fifi Buccieri and Mad Sam DeStefano. All three died in 1973, Mad Sam violently. Giancana was murdered in 1975.

Fulgencio Batista

Batista, Fulgencio (1901–1973): Cuban dictator and Meyer Lansky partner
When at 2:30 A.M., New Year's Day 1959, Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba, arrived at Camp Columbia outside Havana with seven carloads of armed guards, it marked the end of the game for him and the American underworld in Cuba. It is not known how many millions of dollars Batista and several of his cronies took with them—after they had already shipped a huge amount of wealth to Swiss banks. Considerately, however, before coming to the airfield, Batista had been on the phone, telling the chosen few that Castro had won, that the rebels would soon take possession of the capital. But Batista's most important call did not go to a fellow Cuban. It went to Polish Jew Maier Suchowljansky—better known as Meyer Lansky—easily at the time the most important gangster in America. And in Cuba, for that matter.




Lansky followed Batista out of the country within a matter of hours, although he did leave representatives at his casino enterprises to see if Castro would be interested in the same financial setup Lansky had provided Batista. Castro's answer was to throw them in jail for a time before kicking them out of the country. Celebrating the demise of the Batista regime, the Cuban populace went on a slot-machine smashing rampage. It might not have been on a par with the storming of the Winter Palace or Versailles, but for Lansky and the American mob the result was devastating.
Lansky had enjoyed a long relationship with Batista, even before he took the Cuban to his hotel room to show him a set of suitcases stuffed with a reported $6 million, just a sort of good-faith demonstration to prove how easily the boys could set up a gambling empire that would make them and Batista rich. Batista knew Lansky was a producer; he had in the past enjoyed the fruits of a rewarding business by supplying Lansky with a steady flow of molasses to keep a mob bootleg operation functioning.




Batista considered Lansky a "genius," a fact he repeatedly demonstrated by laughing off the efforts of other big-time mobsters to muscle in on Lansky. When Santo Trafficante, the Mafia boss of Tampa, Florida, tried to set up his own casinos on the island, Batista waved him off coldly, saying, "You have to get approval from the 'Little Man' [Lansky] before you can get a license on this island."




Magnanimously, Lansky cut Trafficante in for a small piece of the action, more to demonstrate his power with Batista than to placate Trafficante. That hold continued even after Batista fled. Batista kept hoping that Castro would fall so that he and Lansky could return to Cuba. Needless to say, Batista would never do without Lansky who made taking bribes so easy. The Little Man's aide, Doc Stacher, handled the couriers who took all the gambling profits and Batista's cash bribes direct to Switzerland. Stacher exercised the right to make deposits to Batista's account but the Cuban dictator alone had the authority to withdraw funds from the account.




Obviously Batista never wanted for money during the remaining dozen years of his life. And undoubtedly he often considered the truism that if all his supporters had been as remarkably efficient as Lansky, no upstart like Fidel Castro would ever have overthrown him.

Tobia Basile

Basile, Tobia (c. 1809–?): Camorra's grand old man
The grand old man of the Camorra, the Neapolitan criminal society, Tobia Basile trained many erstwhile Camorristas who ended up as important members of the American underworld. A seasoned criminal when he first entered prison in Italy in 1860, Basile was to remain behind bars for the next 30 years, there to become Italy's greatest crime teacher, instructing numerous eager inmates in the ways and deeds of the Camorra.




The Italian sociologist G. Alongi, a 19th-century expert on the Camorra, made a detailed study of Basile. He wrote:






His numerous pupils used to go to his lessons regularly to listen to his advice, to learn from him the science of "prudence in crime" for be was a walking encyclopedia on the art of the mala vita. His long stay in the penitentiary, his cold and reflective temperament, his cleverness, and his venerable age made him a muchheeded master. For a few cents he would teach the art of stealing from a puppet entirely covered with numberless tiny bells that would jingle at the slightest touch; he taught the tradition of the Honorable Society and the chief rules to be observed in order to conform to its spirit, the art of dealing a straight or a treacherous blow, the way of slipping along the floor without making any noise, the secrets of the Camorristic jargon, a quantity of methods successful in diverting the attention of the police, the way of behaving in the courts, and the numberless swindles committed against the emigrant who, coming from the provinces, stops a few days in Naples on his way to America. This extraordinary man was in possession of a complete outfit of false keys, files, and picklocks, and taught the aspirants all that was necessary to know before being initiated into the Honorable Society.




When Basile was released from prison he was a shrunken old man well over 80 and he was, he felt, an old warhorse ready to be set out to graze. He wanted only to contemplate the world, to be consulted from time to time by other Camorristas, but above all to be free of cares. Unfortunately he had a wife who talked endlessly and nagged. It was not right that an honored Camorrista could not enjoy a peaceful retirement. Basile suffered 10 years of torment and then, suddenly, his wife disappeared in May 1900. Newspaper reporters made a big thing of it, wondering if some of Basile's old enemies were exacting vengeance. Not so, Basile insisted. His wife he said had been abducted "for ransom which a poor man like me doesn't have."




Basile grew more senile with the passing years, walking about Naples mumbling of honor and respect and the art of murder. One day Basile was seen packing his belongings onto a cart and then he was gone, never to be seen again.




Then in 1910 the Basile house was torn down by a new owner so that he could build anew. In the Basile bedroom, workers found a shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whom Camorristas regarded as their special patron. It was removed to reveal a false wall. There behind the wall was the skeleton of Tobia Basile's wife. From the condition of the sealed compartment it was obvious that the woman had been walled up alive and had for many days screamed and tried to claw her way out of her brick and plaster tomb. The position of the bed indicated Basile had lain there with his head no more than two feet from the wall.




It had been the last crime of an honored member of the Camorra, asserting his right to the respect of others.

Leroy Barnes

Barnes, Leroy "Nicky" (1933–): Harlem narcotics king
In the words of one New York reporter, Leroy Barnes is "a sort of Muhammed Ali of crime, or even better the black man's Al Capone."




Born to a poor family in Harlem in 1933, Leroy "Nicky" Barnes was for a time the king of Harlem, the first boss of the "Black Mafia," if the term is correctly understood. The New York Times Magazine profiled him thusly: "Checking in at Shalimar, the Gold Lounge, or Smalls ... he will be bowed to, nodded to, but not touched.'' The juke seemed to always be playing "Baaad, Baaad Leroy Brown," which, according to Barnes's fans, was written specifically for him. "It's like the Godfather movie,'' said a New York police detective of Barnes wading through mobs of admirers, "being treated like the goddamn Pope."




During his heyday, many writers, the present one included, felt Barnes characterized a shift in organized crime leadership to the newer ghetto minorities. But as it turned out, while Barnes became a multimillionaire and was lionized by fellow blacks as "taking over" the mob, he was really no more effective than other ghetto criminals, ultimately capable of exploiting only his own kind. Far from taking over from the Mafia, he was used by it, playing the typical role of ghetto criminals, that of visible kingpin of the street rackets—in Barnes's case, the drug racket. He was indeed king of the Harlem narcotics distributors, but little more.

Barnes's success was mainly due to his alliance with Crazy Joey Gallo, a maverick of the Mafia whom he had met in New York's Green Haven Prison. Barnes was serving a narcotics violations sentence, Gallo doing time for extortion. In his past, Gallo handled or knew of the modus operandi in the mob's dealing with Harlem pushers. He showed Barnes how to achieve dominance in the field and so make himself vital to the mob. It was said that when Gallo was released, the pair agreed to work together. With Gallo's help, Barnes
would gain access to large amounts of heroin shipped directly from Italian sources while Barnes, in return, would supply black "troops" to Gallo when he needed them. In time Barnes was the chief distributor of narcotics in black ghetto areas, not only in New York City, but also in upstate New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.




Nicky Barnes became more than rich; he became "flamboyantly" rich. He was a walking bank, always with an impressive bankroll on him. During one of his arrests, $130,000 was found in the trunk of his automobile. He had a Mercedes Benz and a Citroen Maserati, and the police themselves admitted they had no idea how many Cadillacs, Lincoln Continentals and Thunderbirds Barnes also owned. Barnes maintained several apartments in Manhattan, plus one in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and at least two in New Jersey.




Although Barnes lived an openly lavish life, he beat the government on its reliable tax evasion gambit—Barnes paid taxes on a quarter of a million dollars in annual "miscellaneous income." The IRS insisted Barnes owed a lot more, but substantiating that was no easy matter. In fact, Barnes seemed more or less immune to prosecution. Although he sported 13 arrests, they all led to only one sentence, a short one, behind bars (where he met Gallo). It was this record that made Barnes a cult figure in Harlem and other black communities. "Sure, that's the reason the kids loved the guy and wanted to be like him," a federal narcotics agent told a newsweekly. "Mr. Untouchable—that's what they called him—was rich, but he was smart, too, and sassy about it. The bastard loved to make us cops look like idiots."




Eventually in 1978 Nicky Barnes fell, thanks to a federal narcotics strike force. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and fined $123,000. Behind bars Barnes found his life less than rewarding. In recent years he has started talking to authorities, handing them his confederates in his drug empire in an effort to win his freedom eventually. What he delivered was about a dozen blacks, men who he said were cheating him of his women and the money he had left behind. But that was all Barnes had to offer. What of his vaunted distribution setup, direct to Sicily, if you will? Barnes could offer nothing because he never had it. Mafiosi control the drug supplies. They delivered to Barnes and then he operated as little more than a high-priced pusher. Barnes was so insulated from the rest of the operation that he could offer the government little about the flow of narcotics. After Barnes's departure the drug racket continued to flourish in the black ghettos; distributors, small, medium and large, remained a dime a dozen for the Mafia.




Not that the mob did not miss Leroy. He had been so valuable to them. They could say "the niggers have taken over ... We couldn't run drugs anymore even if we wanted to." Clearly the best friend the so-called Black Mafia ever had has been and continues to be the Italian-American model.

Joseph Barbara Sr.

Barbara, Joseph, Sr. (1905–1959): Apalachin Conference host
The fact that the Apalachin Conference of 1957 was broken up by a New York State police raid couldn't help but throw Joseph Barbara Sr. into public attention. The owner of the mansion where the gangsters met, Barbara was dubbed "The Underworld's Host" by journalists. In fact, Barbara's home was the site of many underworld conferences, of national and regional scope. According to Joe Bonanno's memoirs, the Barbara mansion had been the site not only of the underworld's 1956 national convention but also of the election of members to the national commission for the next five years.




Despite the fiasco of 1957, the mob generally held conferences in safe areas, which the Barbara estate had otherwise been. Since Barbara was a regular Mafia host it would have been inconceivable that "protection" had not been taken care of; the underworld slates meetings only at areas deemed policeproof. According to Joe Bonanno, in his autobiography A Man of Honor (a work that might be deemed spurious for many of its claims, but credible concerning Apalachin), Barbara's connections with many law enforcement agencies had up until that time assured privacy. But over the year preceding Apalachin, Bonanno said, Barbara had been at odds with some law enforcement people over money matters.




Barbara had come to the United States from Sicily in 1921 when he was 16. He emerged in crime as an enforcer in Buffalo, New York, Mafia circles and was arrested several times in connection with a number of murders in Pennsylvania, then within the influence of the aggressive Buffalo family. One Barbara victim was believed to have been racketeer Sam Wichner, who came to Barbara's home in 1933 apparently to discuss business matters with Barbara, Santo Volpe and Angelo Valente, Wichner's silent partners in bootlegging operations. According to the police, Barbara personally strangled Wichner to death. However, as in all the other murder investigations, nothing that would stand up in court could be produced and Barbara remained free from prosecution. Throughout a criminal career that spanned more than three and a half decades Barbara
was only convicted of one crime, the illegal acquisition of 300,000 pounds of sugar in 1946.




After the conviction, Barbara became a beer and soft drink distributor, holding important and exclusive upstate New York franchises, acquired, no doubt, through offers that certain parties could not refuse. After the 1956 national meeting, Barbara suffered a heart attack, and in fact virtually all the mobsters caught at the 1957 Apalachin Conference insisted they had just happened to drop in to pay a visit to a sick friend. It was the merest coincidence, apparently, that all the boys happened to be struck by the same idea at the same time.




While some matters on the agenda for the conference became known, the full story of Apalachin '57 has been shrouded in mystery. Barbara was of little help, insisting he was much too ill to testify. The State Investigation Commission sent its own heart specialist to examine Barbara, and in May 1959 a state supreme court justice ordered him to testify before the commission. Of course, claims of illness by mafiosi always produce two sets of medical men, each with different assessments. In Barbara's case, he proved his doctor correct. A month later he dropped dead of a heart attack.




After the '57 fiasco, Barbara vacated his Apalachin mansion, now too prominent for a residence. In fact, the 58-acre estate was sold for conversion into a tourist attraction, presumably into some form of Mafia Disneyland. Nothing came of the idea.

Frank Balistrieri

Balistrieri, Frank P. (1918–1986): Milwaukee Mafia boss

Although feared by his local "button men" (soldiers), Frank Balistrieri never ranked high in nationwide Mafia or crime syndicate councils. This is explained by Milwaukee's proximity to Chicago.




Noted for spreading its Windy City tentacles over much of the country and operating on the proposition that everything west of Chicago belongs to them, the Chicago Outfit's claim is not entirely recognized in Las Vegas, Arizona or California. But other domains, notably Kansas City and Milwaukee, are another matter.




In September 1985 Balistrieri and eight others were tried in federal court on charges of skimming $2 million of the Argent Corporation's gross income from casino operations. Allegedly, the defendants skimmed the money as a tax dodge and then distributed the cash to organized crime interests in Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland.




Balistrieri had gotten a share but whether it was a fair share is debatable. Both the late Kansas City don Nick Civella and Balistrieri felt they were entitled to
more from the pot in general—and from one another in particular. Finally Civella and Balistrieri requested Chicago crime leaders arbitrate their dispute.




Chicago boss Joey Aiuppa and Jackie the Lackey Cerone, his underboss, served as mediators. Their verdict, a classic, underlined the preeminence of power in the affairs of the "Honored Society." Aiuppa and Cerone decreed that henceforth Chicago itself would take 25 percent of the money skimmed. The case was closed with both Civella and Balistrieri coming out losers.




Perhaps under the circumstances the simplest thing for Balistrieri to do in December 1985 was plead guilty and take a 10-year sentence on the skimming charges.

Harry J Anslinger

AHarry J Anslinger (1892–1975): U.S. narcotics commissioner

One of our most controversial lawmen in this century, Harry J. Anslinger was an implacable foe of the Mafia and consequently a major enemy of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who for more than 30 years maintained the Mafia did not exist. For those same 30 years, Anslinger's men had been gathering names and identities of top gangsters in the United States. Eventually they compiled a list of 800 big names in national and international crime and a black book which was labeled Mafia. This can fairly be called the first federal study of the American Mafia and was done at a time when Hoover's "there-is-no-Mafia" line was generally accepted in law enforcement circles.




The rivalry between Hoover and Anslinger, in his prime a squat, bull-necked, bald, energetic man, was particularly intense. Each considered the other as both incompetent and a threat. But Hoover's disregard of and disrespect for Anslinger was not shared by Hoover's agents. In the early 1950s, Anslinger had provided them with a five-page list, four columns to a page, of the names and cities of over 300 crime family members. There were those who said the specter of organized crime was one that Hoover could not see because it had become visible to Anslinger first.




FBI agents surreptitiously circulated the "List of Mafia Members Obtained From Narcotics Bureau." It had to be done surreptitiously since any agent caught with the list would undoubtedly have been subjected to transfer and, more likely, to dismissal from the service. In his Inside Hoover's FBI Special Agent Neal J. Welch describes FBI men "burning' shiny grayish reproductions on primitive office copiers and passing the list secretly from agent to agent like some heretical religious creed—which it was." Welch relates that when he
became special agent in charge of the Detroit bureau, he was given a faded old copy of the Narcotics Bureau's list with an astounding notation: "In 1952, the Narcotics Bureau had the answers but no one would listen ... every LCN [La Cosa Nostra] member we have is on this list, without exception."




Anslinger clearly was a confirmed Mafia fighter long before Hoover finally was forced into the battle, but like Hoover he suffered certain performance defects. His overstated opinion of the dangers of marijuana, for instance, was in the 1960s to raise him to the status of a cult figure in the same way that Reefer Madness was and is a cult movie today. Anslinger can also be accused of following the headlines in the administration of his office. In 1942, only after the United States went to war with Japan, Anslinger reported to the secretary of the Treasury that there was ample proof that Japan had violated its international commitments for years by its promotion of the opium trade and had used drugs as an offensive weapon against countries it was trying to conquer. "Wherever the Japanese army goes, the drug traffic followsú In every territory conquered by the Japanese a large part of the people become enslaved with drugsú" He noted this had been particularly true in Manchuria and China.




Like the complete bureaucrat, Anslinger followed every twist in American foreign policy and thus in time found the great drug menace was being masterminded by the Red Chinese, who were succeeded, coincidentally during the Korean War, by North Korea.




Anslinger was hewing to the sure road of popularity. With the arrival of the Kennedy administration, he was to embrace Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In his book, The Protectors, published shortly after the assassination of John Kennedy, Anslinger could not contain his praise for Bobby Kennedy, even lapsing into overstatement: "He [Bobby Kennedy] traveled over the country, calling special meetings with our agents, exhorting them to nail the big traffickers. He would review every case with them personallyú He kept the prosecutors on their toes and promised the utmost effort in court to bring about convictionsú" Unfortunately Anslinger also proclaimed: "It was, in large measure, due to his forceful encouragement of our men that we knocked off such public enemies as Vito Genovese, the number one gangster in the United States, Big John Ormento, Joe Valachi and Carmine Galante, and numerous others." The sad fact was that all these men, save the last, had been through the entire prosecution process from arrest to conviction to sentencing to incarceration before Robert Kennedy even took office.




Yet whatever his failings in a quest for popularity and headlines, a peril of the profession among lawmen, Harry J. Anslinger still qualified during his lifetime as the nation's number one and, some would say, only Mafia hunter.

Moses L Annenberg

Moses L Annenberg (1878–1942): Gambling information czar

Probably no fortune in America was built on a sturdier foundation of cooperation with organized crime and the Mafia than that of Moses Annenberg. A newspaper circulation man by trade and a gambler to boot, Moe Annenberg rose from poverty in the slums of South Side Chicago to accumulate the largest estimated individual income of any person in the nation—thanks to mob money.




Considered a "circulation genius" by William Randolph Hearst, Moe started out in the circulation department of the Chicago Tribune. Later, he was hired away by Hearst's new sheets in town, the American and the Examiner, serving from 1904 to 1906 as circulation manager. He became a grand operative during the early Chicago newspaper circulation wars, selling newspapers with an army of sluggers, overturning the competition's delivery trucks, burning their papers and roughing up newspaper vendors.




Moe's "genius," in fact, was muscle. His roster of sluggers reads less like a publishing staff than a muster of public enemies. A typical Annenberg employee was Frank McErlane. Former Chicago journalist George Murray later described the Annenberg-McErlane relationship: "McErlane went on to become the most vicious killer of his time. Moe Annenberg went on to become father of the ambassador to the Court of St. James."




Under Hearst, Annenberg was one of the highestpaid circulation men in the nation. Hearst so valued him that he tolerated Moe's myriad private business dealings. More than Hearst himself, Annenberg realized the money to be made in the racing information field, both legally and illegally. In 1922 he bought the Daily Racing Form and by 1926 his various private businesses became so big he quit Hearst. In a few years Moe took over the New York Morning Telegraph, Radio Guide, Screen Guide and, most important, formed the Nation-Wide News Service in association
with the East Coast's biggest gambler, Frank Erickson, a close associate of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello.




In 1929, Al Capone brought Annenberg into the underworld's famous Atlantic City Conference, the gathering at which the groundwork was laid for the national crime syndicate. Capone and Annenberg ironed out the details of a syndicated racing wire in discussions on the boardwalk.




Nation-Wide brought in a flood of money. The service received its information from telegraph and telephone wires hooked into 29 race tracks and from those tracks into 223 cities in 30 states, where thousands of poolrooms and bookie joints operated in violation of local laws. Annenberg thus became the fifth largest customer of American Telephone and Telegraph, making transmissions only slightly behind RCA and the three press associations of the day. It was with Annenberg's cooperation that Lansky sewed up for himself his preeminent gambling position in Miami and Florida's lush East Coast.




In the 1930s Annenberg also took over the century-old Philadelphia Inquirer and through it became a power in Republican Party politics—a "respectable" citizen. But Moe was to end up like Al Capone—hauled up for income tax evasion. In 1939, both he and his only son, Walter, were indicted. For the year 1932 the government found Annenberg owed $313,000 and paid only a paltry $308. For 1936 alone Annenberg owed an estimated $1,692,000 and paid $470,000, still not the epitome of civic-mindedness. All told, along with interest and penalties, Moe's unpaid taxes came to $9.5 million.




Annenberg claimed that, because much of his activities came during a period of national Democratic dominance, his legal troubles were politically inspired. More accurate was the evaluation of the New York Times, reporting that the money gush became so large "it apparently did not seem worth while to give the government its share."




Walter pleaded not guilty and finally Moe, in what some observers to the conversation regarded as the epitome of paternal devotion, declared: "It's the best gamble. I'll take the rap." Moe was in his 60s and his lawyers advised that a guilty plea by him could well lead to the dropping of charges against his son. The gamble paid off. Moe got a three-year prison term and handed the government $9.5 million in settlement.




Nation-Wide News folded and Moe was succeeded as the country's racing information czar by James M. Ragen, who set up Continental Press Service. Walter Annenberg remained an important publishing king and society figure and under President Richard Nixon went on to become ambassador to England. Moe wasn't around anymore but he would have been proud. "Only in America," he might well have said. And it would have been true. Organized crime and the great fortunes derived from it never flourished as in America.

Gennaro J Anglulo

Gennaro J Anglulo(1919– ): Boss of Boston Mafia

Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo, the boss of the Boston Mafia, was reminiscing one day in 1981, in his North End headquarters, about the gang wars of the 1960s. He told how he and his brothers "buried 20 Irishmen to take this town over. We can't begin to dig up half we got rid of," he said, adding, "And I'm not bragging, either."




As is not uncommon on FBI tapes, the conversation was an excellent case of criminal bragging. The Irish War was actually prosecuted by Angiulo's superior, Raymond Patriarca. There were those who never thought of Angiulo as tough enough to fight a Mafiastyle war. The Mafia in New England, as distinguished from many crime families elsewhere, pretty much stuck to the requirement that a "made" member had to have committed at least one murder. There were only a few exceptions and Angiulo was one of them. (He bought his way into the organization with a $50,000 payoff to Patriarca.)
Jerry Angiulo's rise to power was not within the Mafia itself, but instead was a result of the Kefauver hearings of 1950–1951. At the time, Joseph Lombardo, then crime boss of Massachusetts, decided, what with the Senate probers planning to come to town, it would be a good idea to shut down Boston gambling. He was most interested in preventing any Kefauver heat from affecting the business of the mob's racing wire. For that reason he wanted the probers to have as few targets as possible and pulled his men in Boston out of the numbers racket. The ploy worked. Lombardo came off unscathed but, deciding the heat would be around for a while, he remained out of numbers.




Then Jerry Angiulo, a lowly runner in mob activities, made his move, asking Lombardo's permission to take over the numbers. Lombardo agreed, provided Angiulo understood he had no organization protection, that he was on his own. Well, perhaps not completely on his own—Lombardo got himself a cut of the numbers action while suffering no exposure himself.




Angiulo operated safely until Lombardo was succeeded by new boss Philip Bruccola. Bruccola took so much heat from investigations that he finally fled to Sicily. Now Angiulo was operating without a patron and soon individual mobsters started pressuring him for payoffs. Unable to fight, Angiulo paid until the demands became too great. Finally, he went to Providence where Raymond Patriarca was emerging as the new boss of all New England. He got Patriarca's protection by paying him $50,000 down and guaranteeing him an even larger annual cut from the Boston numbers racket. Patriarca simply placed some phone calls to mobsters in Boston, announcing that "Jerry's with me now" and for them to lay off.




The mobsters had to obey Patriarca and a new setup came to Boston. Angiulo became not only a "made" mafioso, but also the boss of Boston. And Ilario Zannino, one of the mobsters who had been shaking him down, was designated his number two man.




In time, Angiulo became a multimillionaire and the New England Mafia's money and payoff man. According to informer Vinnie Teresa, Angiulo claimed he could make 300 of Boston's 360-odd detectives follow his directives. It is very possible that Angiulo was exaggerating, a tendency he had, but it is true that, after the 1981 bugging of Angiulo's office, 40 Boston police officers were transferred because many of their names had been mentioned on the tapes.




In 1984 New England boss Patriarca died. His underboss Henry Tameleo was in prison and unlikely ever to be freed. Angiulo, as the number three man in the organization, laid claim to the boss position. He didn't get it.




By that time Angiulo was facing massive federal racketeering prosecutions. If convicted, he could have been sentenced to as much as 170 years. But the threat of imprisonment was not at issue in Angiulo's aborted succession. Many members still smarted over the way he had gotten into the mob. Zannino, his underboss, refused, according to an FBI report, to support him, instead backing Raymond J. Patriarca, the late boss's son, for the leadership. The younger Patriarca, the FBI said, named Zannino his counselor and Angiulo was demoted to the status of a mere soldier. That demotion was not necessarily the worst of Jerry Angiulo's worries. In 1986 Angiulo was convicted on racketeering charges and sentenced to 45 years imprisonment.

Anthony Anastasio

Anastasio, Anthony "Tough Tony" (1906–1963): Waterfront racketeer

For about three decades, until his death in 1963, Tough Tony Anastasio ruled the New York waterfront with an iron fist. A vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association and head of Local 1814, he had other, more important, unofficial offices. Although never officially connected to Murder, Inc., and brother
Albert, Tony rarely had to say more than "my brother Albert" to make a point. (Albert Anastasia, the notorious lord high executioner of Murder, Inc., was head of one of New York's five Mafia crime families. Tony kept the original spelling of the family name but he was always ready to invoke Anastasia's name to make a point and solidify his position on the docks. It worked like a charm.)




Tony was ever loyal to Albert. He once confronted a reporter for the New York World-Telegram and Sun and demanded: "How come you keep writing all those bad things about my brother Albert? He ain't killed nobody in your family ... yet."




Because dock rivals knew Tough Tony had the full weight of the mob behind him, they never seriously challenged him. As a result, Tony's word was supreme. During World War II, as part of a Mafia plot he orchestrated the sabotage of the French luxury liner S.S. Normandie, demonstrating to federal authorities that the docks weren't safe unless the Mafia received concessions. "Concessions" equalled the transfer of Lucky Luciano, then imprisoned in Dannemora, the "Siberia" of New York state's penal system, to a far less restrictive prison. The demand met, Luciano saw to it that no other ships were burned in New York and did other "good works'' for the war effort. In 1946, he was pardoned by Governor Thomas E. Dewey. On February 9 Luciano was escorted aboard the Laura Keene, docked in Brooklyn's Bush Terminal. A mob of reporters tried to follow but some 50 longshoremen carrying menacing-looking bailing hooks kept them away. Tough Tony saw to it that only top gangland figures were permitted on board to bid Luciano farewell on his deportation to Italy. It was, observers said, Tough Tony's finest hour.




The fact remained that Anastasio only rose as far as his brother's clout permitted. When Albert was murdered in 1957, Tony raced to the barbershop in Manhattan to identify the body. Then, it developed, he rushed to Frank Costello's apartment where a visitor found them embracing each other and sobbing. Costello expressed a fear that he would be the next one marked for death. It went without saying Tough Tony's power would wane. How much did not become known for many years.




Carlo Gambino succeeded as head of the Anastasia crime family and in due course Tough Tony was reduced to figurehead status. The assault on Anastasio's ego was enough to loosen his tongue and he started talking to the Justice Department. Before he could be developed into a full scale informant, he died of natural causes in 1963.

Albert Anastasia

Anastasia, Albert (1903–1957): Executioner and crime family boss

Albert Anastasia, chief executioner of Murder, Inc., found his unbridled brutality could land him leadership of one of the most important Mafia families in the country. But, preoccupied with killing, he was not really a competent godfather, a fact decisively indicated by the efficient and prosperous operation of the family under Anastasia's underboss and successor, Carlo Gambino.




One of nine brothers, Italian-born Anastasia jumped ship in the United States sometime between 1917 and 1920. He became active in Brooklyn's dock operations and rose to a position of authority in the longshoreman's union. It was here that Anastasia first demonstrated his penchant for murder at the slightest provocation, killing a fellow longshoreman in the early '20s. Nor was his executioner's behavior pattern altered by a consequent 18-month stay in the death house in Sing Sing. He went free when, at a new trial, the four most important witnesses turned up missing, a situation that proved permanent.




Dead witnesses forever littered Anastasia's trail. In the mid-1950s Anastasia was prosecuted for income tax evasion. The first trial ended in a hung jury. A second trial was scheduled for 1955. Charles Ferri, a Fort Lee, New Jersey, plumbing contractor who had collected $8,700 for work he had performed on Anastasia's home, was expected to be a key witness. In April, about a month before the retrial, Ferri and his wife disappeared from their blood-splattered home in a Miami, Florida, suburb. Some time earlier Vincent Macri, an Anastasia associate, had been found shot to death, his body stuffed in the trunk of a car in the Bronx. A few days after that, Vincent's brother Benedicto was declared missing, his body supposedly dumped in the Passaic River. The erasure of the two Ferris and the two Macris was seen as part of a plot to eliminate all possible witnesses against Anastasia. At Anastasia's trial the crime boss suddenly entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to one year in federal prison. It was unlikely the government would have accepted what amounted to a plea bargain had it still had a full arsenal of witnesses against him.




Considering Anastasia's lifelong devotion to homicide as the solution to any problem it was not surprising that he and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter were installed as the operating heads of the national crime syndicate's enforcement arm, Murder, Inc. Some estimates have it that Murder, Inc., may have taken in a decade of operation a toll of between 400 and 500 victims. Unlike Lepke and many other members of Murder, Inc., Anastasia was never prosecuted for any of the crimes. There was a "perfect case" against him, but the main prosecution witness not surprisingly disappeared.




Anastasia was always a devoted follower of others, primarily Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello. His devotion to Luciano knew no bounds. When in 1930 Luciano finalized plans to take over crime in America by destroying the two old-line Mafia factions headed by Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, he outlined his plot to Anastasia. He knew the Mad Hatter, as Anastasia had become known, would enthusiastically kill for him. Anastasia responded by seizing Luciano in a bear hug and kissing him on both cheeks. "Charlie," he said, "I been waiting for this day for at least eight years. You're gonna be on top if I have to kill everybody for you. With you there, that's the only way we can have any peace and make the real money." Anastasia was personally part of the four-man death squad that mowed down Masseria in a Coney Island restaurant in 1931.




During World War II Anastasia appears to have been the originator of a plan to free Luciano from prison by
winning him a pardon for "helping the war effort." To accomplish the goal, Anastasia set out to create problems on the New York waterfront so the Navy would agree to any kind of deal to stop sabotage. The French luxury liner S.S. Normandie, in the process of being converted into a troopship, burned and capsized in New York harbor. Anastasia was credited with ordering his brother, Tough Tony Anastasio (different spelling of the last name), to carry out the sabotage. Afterward, a deal was made for Luciano to get lighter treatment in prison, and Anastasia was informed to cease waterfront troubles. Lansky years later told his Israeli biographers: "I told him face to face that he mustn't burn any more ships. He was sorry—not sorry he'd had the Normandie burned but sorry he couldn't get at the Navy again. Apparently he had learned in the Army to hate the Navy. 'Stuck-up bastards' he called them."




Anastasia's violent ways could be contained as long as Luciano and Costello pulled the strings. In 1951 Costello may well have been the prime mover in Anastasia's rise to boss of the Mangano crime family in which he was technically an underling. Through the years boss Vince Mangano had fumed at Anastasia's closeness to Luciano, Costello, Adonis and others and that they used him without first seeking Mangano's approval. Frequently Mangano and Anastasia almost came to blows over family affairs, and it was considered only a matter of time until one or the other was killed. In 1951 Vince's brother, Phil Mangano, was murdered and Vince himself became another in Anastasia's legion of the permanently missing. Anastasia then claimed control of the family with Costello's active support. At a meeting of all the bosses of New York families, Costello backed up Anastasia's claim that
Mangano was planning to kill Anastasia and that Albert had a right to act in self-defense. Faced with a fait accompli the other bosses could do nothing but accept Anastasia's elevation.




It appears Costello had other motivation for wanting Anastasia in control of the crime family. Costello at the time was facing a concentrated challenge from Vito Genovese for control of the Luciano family now that Luciano was in exile. Up until 1951 Costello had depended for muscle on New Jersey crime family boss Willie Moretti, but Moretti was in the process of losing his mind and would soon be a rubout in a "mercy killing" by the mob. That meant Costello needed new muscle and Anastasia, with a family of gunmen behind him, would make a strong foil to Genovese.




Unfortunately, as a crime boss Anastasia turned even more kill-crazy than ever. In 1952 he even ordered the murder of a young Brooklyn salesman named Arnold Schuster after watching Schuster bragging on television about his role as primary witness in bank robber Willie Sutton's arrest. "I can't stand squealers!" Anastasia raged to his men. "Hit that guy!"




In killing Schuster, Anastasia had violated a cardinal crime syndicate rule which ran, as Bugsy Siegel once quaintly put it, "We only kill each other." Outsiders—prosecuters, reporters, the public in general—were not to be killed. Members of the general public could only be hit if the very life of the organization or some of its top leaders were threatened. This certainly was not the case with Arnold Schuster, a man whose killing generated much heat on the mob. Like other members of the syndicate, even Luciano in Italy and Costello were horrified, but they could not disavow Anastasia because they needed him to counter Genovese's growing ambitions and power. Genovese cunningly used Anastasia's kill-crazy behavior against him, wooing supporters away from Anastasia on that basis. Secretly over a few years time Genovese won the cooperation of Anastasia's underboss, Carlo Gambino. Gambino in turn recruited crime boss Joe Profaci to oppose Anastasia.




Still, Genovese dared not move against Anastasia and his real target, Costello, because of Meyer Lansky, the highest-ranking and the most powerful member of the national syndicate. Normally Lansky would not have supported Genovese under any circumstances, their dislike for each other going back to the 1920s. But in recent years Lansky was riding high as the king of casino gambling in Cuba, cutting in other syndicate bosses for lesser shares. When Anastasia leaned on him for a piece of the action, Lansky refused. So Anastasia started working on plans to bring his own gambling setup into Cuba. That was not something Lansky took lightly. Anyone messing with his gambling empire went. That applied to Lansky's good friend Bugsy Siegel and it certainly applied to Anastasia. Up until then Lansky had preferred to let Anastasia and Genovese bleed each other to death, but now he gave his approval to the former's eradication.




Anastasia's rubout was carried out with an efficiency that the former lord high executioner of Murder, Inc., would have approved. On the morning of October 25, 1957, Anastasia entered the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York for a quick going over. Anastasia's bodyguard parked the car in an underground garage and then most conveniently decided to take a little stroll. Anastasia relaxed in the barber chair, closing his eyes. Suddenly two men, scarves covering their faces, marched in. One told the shop owner, Arthur Grasso, who was standing by the cash register: "Keep your mouth shut if you don't want your head blown off."




The pair moved on Anastasia's chair, shoving the attending barber out of the way. Anastasia still did not open his eyes. Both men shot Anastasia, who after the first volley jumped to his feet. Anastasia lunged at his killers or what he thought were his killers, trying to get them with his bare hands. Actually he attacked their reflection in the mirror. It took several more shots to drop him, but he finally fell to the floor dead.




Like virtually all gang killings, the Anastasia murder remains unsolved. It is known, though, that the contract was given to Joe Profaci who passed it on to the three homicidal Gallo brothers from Brooklyn. Whether they did it themselves or let others handle the actual gunning was never determined.




The double-dealing did not cease with Anastasia's death. Gambino now secretly deserted Genovese and joined with Lansky, Luciano and Costello in a plot that would entrap Genovese in a narcotics conviction and send him away to prison for the rest of his life. In that sense Anastasia was avenged, but it was not with the abrupt finality that the kill-crazy executioner would likely have preferred.

Samuzzo Amatuna

Amatuna, Samuzzo "Samoots" (1898–1925): Chicago mafioso

Samuzzo "Samoots" Amatuna, a prime example of the old-line mafiosi, failed to embrace the concept of organized crime and the so-called American Mafia. Nevertheless, Samoots—colorful, brutal and cunning—for a time held a power base from which he actually challenged Capone's control of crime in Chicago.




Samoots was a professional fiddler and may well have been the first gangster to conceal a weapon in an instrument case, choosing the technique for his
attempted murder of a musicians' union business agent. Also a fop, Samoots was the proud owner of a wardrobe that included 200 monogrammed silk shirts. Once, gun in hand, he chased after a Chinese laundry wagon driver who had returned one of his shirts scorched. Samoots was ready to plug the Asian man but evidently was overwhelmed with an uncharacteristic burst of humanity. He spared the man but shot his delivery horse.




For a time Samoots functioned as the chief bodyguard for the notorious Terrible Gennas, a mafioso family that controlled much of Little Italy's homemade moonshine production. As the Genna brothers were exterminated or scattered one by one, Samoots moved up in power. In 1925 he seized control of the huge Chicago chapters of the Unione Siciliane. The organization had been a lawful fraternal group at the turn of the century, but from then on, it came more and more under the control of Mafia criminals. Chicago boasted the largest number of branches of the Unione, whose 40,000 members represented a potent force as well as an organization ripe for looting through various rackets, such as the manipulation of pension funds. For years the Unione had been dominated by Mike Merlo, who used his influence to keep peace among the various criminal forces, but after his death in 1924 the Unione presidency became a hot seat. Bloody Angelo Genna took over as president, only to be murdered in May 1925.




Capone, himself a non-Sicilian and ineligible for membership, sought to put in his consigliere, Tony Lombardo, as president. He made plans for the next election. Samoots didn't see what elections had to do with the matter. Together with two confederates, Eddie Zion and Abe "Bummy" Goldstein, Samoots marched into the Unione's offices and declared himself elected. Capone raged and got even more furious as Samoots proceeded to gouge his booze and other operations.




Old-fashioned mafiosi, in Capone's view, were greed personified. He realized that old Mafia traditions had to be eradicated, a position that eventually brought him closer to Lucky Luciano in New York.




Meanwhile, happily, Samoots had many other enemies. The O'Banion Irish gang of the North Side, still mighty despite the murder of their leader, did not care for Samoots's moves against them. On November 13, 1925, Samoots, planning to go to the opera with his fiancee, Rose Pecorara, stopped off at a Cicero barbershop for a shave. He was reclining in the chair with a towel over his face when two gunmen, reputedly Jim Doherty and Schemer Drucci of the North Siders, stormed in. One of the gunners opened up with four shots and, incredibly, missed with each of them. The startled Samoots catapulted out of the barber's chair and tried to dance around the shots of the second gunner. The second assassin hit Samoots with each of his four shots, and the hit men walked out, their victim bleeding profusely. Samoots was rushed to a hospital and lived long enough to request that he marry his fiancee from his hospital bed. He expired before the ceremony could get started.




Within a short time Samoots's two aides, Zion and Goldstein, were also murdered, and, having preserved democracy, Capone was able to put across his man Lombardo to take charge of the Unione.




Since Samoots's murder was the second barbershop slaying in a very short time, nervous barbers with a gangster clientele ceased the hot towel treatment and positioned their chair to face the shop entrance. The Chicago custom did not make its way to New York, where a little over three decades later Albert Anastasia fell victim in a barber chair ambush.




Amberg, Louis "Pretty" (1898–1935): Independent racketeer and killer
When Pretty Amberg, often said to be the worst Jewish criminal ever raised in America, departed this world, it was hard to tell who had done the grisly chore. One theory holds that the Lucky Luciano-Meyer Lansky combination, realizing there was no way Amberg could fit into a syndicate concept of crime, had him "put to sleep" to allow organized crime to function in some organized fashion.




If the mob didn't kill Amberg it was only because someone else may have beaten them to it. Surely everybody hated Pretty—with the possible exception of newspaper columnist and short story writer Damon Runyon. In a number of short stories, a thinly disguised Amberg stuffs victims into laundry bags in an ingeniously trussed-up form that causes them to strangle themselves to death. In reality, Louis Amberg is believed to have murdered at least 100 people; yet, as he deposited corpses all over the streets of Brooklyn, he was never so much as hit with a littering violation.




Amberg came to America from Russia with his mother and father, a fruit peddler, and settled in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. By the age of 10 little Louis was peddling fruit on his own. He had a unique style of selling, going from door-to-door, kicking until someone opened up. With his hands filled with fruits and vegetables, he'd shove them forward and snarl: "Buy." Somehow, after staring into the wells of madness that were little Louis's eyes, people bought.




By the age of 20 Pretty was the terror of Brownsville, not only because he was mean, but also because he was very ugly. In fact, a representative from Ringling Brothers offered him a job with the circus as the missing link.
Remarkably, Louis did not kill the man; instead he bragged about the offer.




Pretty Amberg however had no time for showbiz. There was too much money to be made in loan-sharking. Unlike the banks of Brownsville that hesitated to loan money to new immigrants, Pretty and his brother Joe never turned down an applicant. Of course they did charge interest, a mere 20 percent per week, and as Joe counted out the money, Pretty would snarl at the borrower, "I will kill you if you don't pay us back on time." He wasn't kidding.




The Ambergs were so successful that they expanded their loan-sharking activities to Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn, but Pretty's malicious heart remained in Brownsville. He was the king of Pitkin Avenue where his idea of fun was to stroll into a cafeteria and spit in people's soup. If a diner raised an objection, Pretty would tilt the whole bowl on his lap. Even Buggsy Goldstein, who would soon become one of the more deadly killers in the fledgling Murder, Inc., silently took Pretty's abuse. Famous Murder, Inc., stool pigeon Abe Reles later told the law, "The word was that Pretty was nutty."




Pretty expanded his control of Brownsville to include bootlegging. The speakeasy that did not take Pretty's booze got bombed. Soon Pretty was awash with money, and he became a well-known gorilla-about-town. Waiters vied to tend him since he never tipped less than $100. (We owe the following special intelligence to Damon Runyon, that the first time New York's playboy mayor, Jimmy Walker, saw Pretty at his favorite watering hole, the Central Park Casino, His Honor vowed to stay off booze.)




Amberg further expanded his criminal activities to include laundry services for Brooklyn businesses. Although his charges were steep, he offered businessmen a deal they couldn't refuse—they used his laundry and they stayed in business.




Some dark-humored journalists insisted Pretty got into the laundry racket just so he would have a supply of laundry bags for all his stiffs. It is a fact that laundry bags stuffed with corpses started littering the streets of Brooklyn about this time. One victim turned out to be an Amberg loan shark client who was in arrears for $80. Pretty was picked up on a murder charge, but he laughed it off, stating, "I tip more than that. Why'd I kill a bum for a lousy 80 bucks?"




Actually that was Pretty Amberg for you. His credo was to knock off customers who were behind in their payments for small total sums. That way their demise would cost him very little on his original investment and at the same time serve as a powerful warning to bigger debtors. The police knew all about this but could prove nothing. Pretty had to be let loose.




Pretty protected his domain from other gangsters in the early 1930s. The Depression had hit criminal operations and most crime leaders were looking for more ways to make a buck. Big-time racketeer Owney Madden once told Pretty that he'd never been in Brownsville in his life and suggested he come out and "let you show me the sights." Ever the diplomat, Pretty, who was carving up a steak at the moment, replied, "Tell you what, Owney, if I ever see you in Brownsville, I'll cut your heart out on the spot."




Next, Legs Diamond made noise about moving into the area. Pretty informed him, "We'll be pals, Jack, but if you ever set foot in Brownsville, I'll kill you and your girlfriend and your missus and your whole damn family."




With the end of Prohibition the financial stresses got worse. Dutch Schultz, by then down to little more than a multimillion dollar numbers racket centered in Harlem, told Amberg, "Pretty, I think I'm going to come in as your partner in Brooklyn."




"Arthur," Pretty said, "why don't you put a gun in your mouth and see how many times you can pull the trigger."

Pithy comments were not enough to put off a tough like Schultz. In 1935 he put a couple of his boys, Benny Holinsky and Frank Dolak, in a new loan office in Borough Hall, just a block away from the Amberg operation. Within 24 hours the two Schultz men were bullet-riddled corpses.




The Schultz-Amberg war broke out in earnest, and the next victim was Joey Amberg, killed in an ambush. Later, in October 1935, both Pretty Amberg and Schultz died. Schultz's execution had been ordered by the Luciano-Lansky crime syndicate. It may well be that the boys also had Amberg put out of the way. However, there is a quainter story told by some observers. According to this version, each man was responsible for having the other knocked off. Amberg supposedly paid some hit men $25,000 down to murder Schultz with another $25,000 payable on completion of the contract.




In the meantime Amberg was murdered, supposedly on Schultz's orders. His body was pulled from a blazing automobile on a Brooklyn street, charred beyond all recognition. There was wire wrapped around his neck, arms and legs and it took several days for an identification to be made. In the meantime some gunmen blasted Dutch Schultz in a Newark chop house. Poor Schultz may have died never knowing Pretty Amberg had gone to his reward.




Actually, it was never determined whether Amberg's death was a Schultz job or a Luciano-Lansky caper. There was even a third theory that Amberg had been murdered by an angry gang of armed robbers with whom he had joined in a major job and then taken most of the loot for himself.




In Brooklyn, most everyone thought it was about time somebody did something about Pretty Amberg.

Louis Alterie

Louis Alterie "Two Gun" (1892–1935): Gangster

A prelude to establishing a national crime syndicate in America was the purging from the underworld of unorganizable pathological types. Of course, the Mafia still has its pathological members, and such traits are still highly valuable to the masters of organized crime. But the brass could retain only those brutes who took orders and conformed to orderly criminality. If they did not, they were more dangerous than a loose cannon on the battlefield.

Alterie, born Leland Verain, owned a ranch in Colorado, but came east to join up with O'Banion's booze and gambling operations. Wearing two pistols, one on each hip, he boasted of his perfect marksmanship with either left or right hand, often shooting out the lights in saloons to prove his point. Quite naturally the press dubbed him Two Gun Alterie, which pleased him most of the time. However, at times he carried three pieces and was disappointed that he was not generally rechristened as the more-imposing "Three Gun" Alterie.


Alterie reputedly masterminded the hit on a horse guilty of transgressions against the mob. A leading member of the O'Banion Gang, Nails Morton, had been thrown by a horse in a riding mishap in Lincoln Park and kicked to death. Alterie demanded that vengeance be done and he led the gang to the riding stable. The boys kidnapped the horse, led it to the exact spot of Morton's demise and executed it. Alterie was so worked up by the "murder" of good old Nails that he first punched the hapless horse in the snout before filling it with lead.


When Dion O'Banion was murdered by Capone gunmen in 1924, Two Gun Alterie went on an hysterical tear. In a tearful performance at the funeral, Alterie raged to reporters: "I have no idea who killed Deanie, but I would die smiling if only I had a chance to meet the guys who did, any time, any place they mention and I would get at least two or three of them before they got me. If I knew who killed Deanie, I'd shoot it out with the gang of killers before the sun rose in the morning." Asked where in his opinion the shootout should occur, he said Chicago's busiest intersection, Madison and State Streets, at high noon. Mayor William E. Dever countered, "Are we still abiding by the code of the Dark Ages?"


Hymie Weiss, who took over leadership of the O'Banions, tried to get Alterie to tone down, explaining that his ranting was forcing politicians and police to put pressure on the gang's operations on the North Side. Alterie responded with a knowing wink and managed to shut his mouth for an entire week. Then he turned up, swaggering into a Loop nightclub brandishing his two pistols and announcing to gangster and reporters who frequented the joint: "All 12 bullets in these rods have Capone's initials carved on their noses. And if I don't get him, Bugs, Hymie or Schemer will."


Weiss, trying to put on a peaceful front while planning an attack on Capone, was livid. He told Bugs Moran to "move him." Moran went to the cowboy gangster and growled, "You're getting us in bad. You run off at the mouth too much."

Alterie took Moran's words for precisely what they were, an invitation to get out of town. Alterie went back to Colorado and played no further role in the Chicago gang wars. He thus escaped the virtual extinction of the O'Banion Gang, save for Moran, who in the 1930s was reduced to insignificance.


In 1935 Alterie showed up in Chicago for a visit. Was it possible Alterie still lived by his old words? Almost certainly not. But perhaps out of respect for his old days with O'Banion apparently he was bumped off.

Gus alex

Gus alex(1916– ): Chicago mob leader

The myth of the all-Italian Mafia is soon dispelled when one looks at the Chicago mob founded by Al Capone. Its ability to absorb other ethnics started with Capone, who readily took in and trusted everyone, from WASPs and Jews to Poles, blacks and others. Thus Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, a Jew, could rise to what could only be described as the number two position in the outfit; and each of Capone's successors—Nitti, Ricca, Accardo, Giancana—gave Guzik the widest leeway and trust. The same was true of Gus Alex, Guzik's protégé and role successor with the mob. A Greek, Gussie Alex ran the Loop vice rackets for the family for years and worked the liaison between the mob and various supposedly respectable figures in the business and political world. He also has been identified as the man who handled the Las Vegas skim for the Chicago family. The Swiss government came to recognize him as the man who salted away Chicago money in that Alpine banking haven.
Alex, an avid skier, made annual trips to Switzerland until the mid-1960s, when the Swiss tabbed him as a courier bearing loads of underworld cash and barred him from their country for 10 years. It was clear that the Swiss were being pressured by the U.S. government. However, Alex had his own political artillery. Coming to his aid were Illinois' then senior senator, Republican Everett M. Dirksen, and the state's then senior congressman, Democrat William L. Dawson.
Both informed the Swiss what a swell guy Gussie really was. Though he had often been arrested, he had never been convicted. (Gussie's record included more than two dozen arrests for bribery, assault, manslaughter and kidnapping. He was identified as a suspect in several murders, two victims contributing deathbed statements; three other individuals, who testified that Alex had threatened them with death, were later killed. Alex also appeared before the McClellan Committee and took the Fifth Amendment 39 times. Dirksen had not been quite as forgiving to "Fifth Amendment communists.")

Despite Alex's reluctance to talk about himself, Dirksen and Dawson clearly agreed he had "a good reputation."

Alex's influence with politicians, public officials, members of the judiciary and labor leaders made him extremely valuable to the Chicago Outfit. In fact, as death, retirement, arrest and flight from jurisdiction played hob with much of the Chicago mob's leadership in the 1970s, there was pressure on Alex to take up the reins. Alex begged off, spending more and more time in Florida and insisting he wanted to retire. Instead, he simply kept performing his high-level role. Had Gussie accepted, it would certainly have been rather disconcerting to those writers and professional informers who insist the Mafia is strictly Italian. Perhaps they would have been forced to observe that, after all, it was the Greeks who first settled in Sicily.

Law enforcement officials had long abandoned any hope of putting Alex away. But they finally convicted him of extortion, thanks to the evidence provided by a longtime Outfit member, Lenny Patrick, who wore a wire in hopes of winning a shorter sentence for himself. In 1994 Alex was sentenced to 15 years and eight months with no chance of parole. At 78, it was likely that Alex, till then a true teflon mobster, was not likely to survive the jail term, which had a special fillip that he had to pay $1,400 a month for the cost to the taxpayers for his prison cell.


On the last day of his life, October 4, 1951, Willie Moretti granted Albert Anastasia a special favor: He let Anastasia borrow his chauffeur, Harry Shepherd, to drive him to a hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, where Anastasia was to have his back x-rayed. While Anastasia was at the hospital, Moretti, conveniently minus his driver, was lured into Joe's Elbow Room in Cliffside Park by several of Anastasia's gunners. There Willie Moretti was shot to death.

The police most certainly could not blame Anastasia for the murder; he had an iron-clad alibi. Indeed, Anastasia was the kind of careful executioner who always covered his tracks. As a rule of thumb, some experts determined that when Anastasia was absolutely in the clear personally he was almost positively deeply involved.

Like fedoras and fancy cars, airtight alibis are practically synonymous with the Mafia. Al Capone would almost invariably be in Florida taking the sun whenever a particularly noteworthy hit took place in Chicago. He was there when reporter Jake Lingle was murdered, when Frankie Yale was killed in Brooklyn, and when the St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred. "I get blamed for everything that goes on here," Capone once moaned, having returned to Chicago to face extensive police grilling.

Sometimes Capone did his killings personally when he felt particularly affronted by his victims-to-be, but he, like most bosses, usually farmed out the chores. The murder of Big Jim Colosimo allowed Capone's mentor, Johnny Torrio, to seize control of the Colosimo organization and start syndicating Chicago crime. Both Torrio and Capone were prime suspects—Capone would probably have enjoyed doing the hit—but each presented unassailable alibis for the time of the murder. Frankie Yale imported by Torrio and Capone from New York, actually made the hit.

Perhaps the champion at alibis among the recentvintage Mafia dons was Joe Bonanno. He seemed to have developed a sort of clairvoyance that got him out of town whenever big doings were about to occur—such as the erasure of another crime boss, an event that more often than not required an exchange of information between New York crime families.

Bonanno's autobiography, A Man of Honor, is replete with examples of being away at the right time. When crime family boss Vince Mangano disappeared permanently, Bonanno could do nothing but read about it in the newspapers ''at my winter residence in Tucson, Arizona." It is nigh unto impossible to get much farther away from New York City in the continental United States than Tucson. When Albert Anastasia was murdered in a conspiracy that included Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, most likely Meyer Lansky, and certainly with Tommy Lucchese's okay, only Frank Costello—who needed Anastasia as a shield—could have been deemed free of motive. Bonanno? He was on an international jaunt that took him to France, Sicily and far-off India.

But sometimes alibis aren't quite good enough. When Joe Profaci's successor, Joe Magliocco, sought to have a number of crime bosses murdered—the general theory is that it was under Bonanno's influence and orders—Bonanno pointed out he was on the move at the time to avoid legal summonses and subpoenas. The national commission did not buy that line, being all too familiar with Bonanno's "I wasn't around" patter, and moved to strip him of control of his crime family.

Today, some crime experts say, alibis are not considered important by crime big shots. It is generally conceded by the press, public and police that they seldom carry out their own executions. On the rare occasions when they do, usually out of personal pique, care is taken that the victim's corpse is never found, making time and place of the murder obscure and the need for an alibi obsolete.

Felix Alderisio

Felix Alderisio "Milwaukee Phil" (1912–1971)

Debt collector and hit man, Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio was the genuine bogeyman for the Chicago mob. He controlled the prostitution racket in nearby Milwaukee and figured largely in the gambling, loan-sharking and narcotics rackets there.
As a debt collector, Phil was once sent, in tandem with another Chicago torpedo, to the offices of a Colorado lawyer named Sunshine. Sunshine had allegedly mishandled some investments, causing significant monetary losses for Phil's bosses. "We're here to kill you." Phil announced blithely to the petrified attorney.
Sunshine pleaded with his would-be killers, explaining that he had not cheated his and their clients and that it was an honest loss. Milwaukee Phil was contemptuous of such delaying tactics. He said the only way for the lawyer to avoid death was to hand over the dough instantly or the execution would go forward.

Still the lawyer persisted, and for 90 minutes he brought out ledger after ledger to demonstrate his honesty. Even the likes of Milwaukee Phil could be swayed by argument and logic at times. "It's a little irregular," he said, "but just to show you there's no hard feelings, I'll do it. If he [Phil's mob superior] wants to cancel the hit, it's okay with me. I'll get paid anyway."
Then and there a long-distance call was placed and Phil came up with one less-than-lethal offer: If the lawyer would agree to pay back the principal of $68,000 plus interest at the rate of $2,000 a month, he would be permitted to continue breathing.

It was an offer Sunshine could not refuse—and a happy ending all around. As one mob leader put it gleefully, the deal Milwaukee Phil had arranged meant "we'll be collecting from this sucker for the rest of his life."

As a hit man Milwaukee Phil was suspected by authorities to have carried out contracts on 13 or 14 victims. He also has been credited with designing what some journalists labeled the "hitmobile," a car equipped with all the necessities for the commission of efficient homicide. Among the extras with which Alderisio fitted his vehicle were such devices as switches that would turn off front or rear lights to confuse police tailers. A secret compartment in a backrest not only carried an array of lethal weapons but also contained clamps to anchor down rifles, shotguns or handguns for more steady aiming while the car was moving.

Although Phil was arrested 36 times for burglary, gambling, assault and battery and murder, he avoided any major conviction or sentencing until his last arrest in the 1960s. He was convicted of extortion and died in prison in 1971.
When Milwaukee Phil's body was shipped back to suburban Chicago for burial, top mobster Tony Accardo attended the funeral. Accardo always loved how Milwaukee Phil had handled Sunshine and, going to the funeral—a regular Accardo chore as his longtime buddies died off—he whistled as the hearse went by, "You are my sunshine...."

Both Accardo's bodyguard and the FBI agents who tailed him were appalled at such a display of poor taste, but Accardo had no doubt that Milwaukee Phil would have loved the joke.

Joseph John Aiuppa

Joseph John Aiuppa (1907– ):

Chicago Outfit leader

Although he never got beyond the third grade in school, Joe Aiuppa had plenty of criminal smarts as well as old-style Capone muscle. These traits propelled him to the top position in the Chicago Outfit, where he bowed to no one except the semi-retired Tony Accardo. Operating out of Cicero, always the Chicago mob's stronghold, he started out as a gunner for the Capones and so was questioned in several murder investigations.

Aiuppa may have used raw power to maintain the mob's rackets in Cicero but, at the same time, he mastered the big fix. He was once thought to be paying $500 a month to have secret copies of intelligence reports, from the Chicago Crime Commission to the sheriff's office, sent to him. And he was once recorded in a conversation with a "wired" police officer as saying he could obtain secret grand jury testimony. The extent of Aiuppa's fixing ability was further highlighted in another taped conversation, when an underworld aide informed the same officer that Aiuppa had learned the lawman had been wired for sound.
Aiuppa bears two nicknames. One is "Ha Ha" because he is a dour-looking, menacing mobster who seldom cracks a smile. The other is "Mourning Doves" since one of his few convictions was three months in a federal prison for illegally possessing and transporting over 500 mourning doves from Kansas to Chicago. In the underworld he developed a reputation for hunting rabbits and ducks with a shotgun.

When Sam Giancana was removed from active control of the syndicate in the mid-1960s, leadership reverted to the semi-retired leaders, Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo, who in time brought in Aiuppa to run the mob. After Ricca's death, Aiuppa was in active con
trol, with Accardo as an adviser. Aiuppa joined Accardo in semi-retirement and adopted a similar adviser role with the new active leader in Chicago, Jackie the Lackey Cerone.

If the murder of Sam Giancana was a mob job and not a CIA caper as some in the underworld insist, it is obvious it had to have been okayed by Aiuppa—as was the steady elimination of Giancana supporters both before and after the murder. According to an FBI theory, Aiuppa and Accardo were angered at Giancana's refusal to share the proceeds from gambling ship operations he had set up in Mexico using mob money.

After Giancana's closest mob associate, Johnny Roselli, was murdered in Florida, underworld informer Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno had a conversation with Aiuppa. The boss said with exaggerated casualness, "By the way, do you remember that guy, what the fuck's his name, you know, the guy they found in a barrel in Florida?"

Fratianno, who, as Aiuppa knew, had been very close to Roselli, was very casual as well, suspecting that Aiuppa would have him killed on the spot if he said anything favorable about Roselli.

The incident emphasized a point made often in the underworld: If Joey Aiuppa considers you a has-been, you're as good as dead.

It may well be that is what happened to Anthony Spilotro in 1986 after Aiuppa was convicted for conspiring to skim money from Las Vegas casinos. Spilotro, long described as figuring in more than 25 execution-style killings, had been since 1971 the Chicago Outfit's representative in Las Vegas and California; the speculation was that Aiuppa felt Spilotro's carelessness had caused his conviction.

Two bludgeoned bodies were found buried in a cornfield near Enos, Indiana. They were those of 48-year-old Tony Spilotro and his 41-year-old brother Michael. They had been beaten to death with heavy blows to their heads, necks and chests. The burial spot was five miles from a farm owned by Joe Aiuppa.

In 1986 Aiuppa was convicted of, among other charges, the multimillion dollar skimming of Las Vegas casinos. He was sentenced to a long prison term from which he did not figure to emerge alive.

Joseph Aiello

Joseph Aiello (1891–1930):

Chicago Mafia leader and Capone foe

Just as Lucky Luciano wiped out the Mustache Pete influences in New York to create a new Mafia along multiethnic syndicate lines, Al Capone did the same in Chicago, wiping out the Aiello family—especially Joe Aiello, often described as the Mafia boss of the city. Aiello was a Castellammarese and sided with Salvatore Maranzano in the great New York Mafia War against the then-dominant forces of Joe the Boss Masseria. Aiello dutifully forwarded the Maranzano forces $5,000 a week for the war chest. According to informer Joe Valachi, this meant Capone was supporting Masseria and what happened to Aiello was determined by the Chicago gang wars.

As Aiello and Capone jockeyed for supremacy Aiello and his brothers, Dominick, Antonio and Andrew, fought hard and allied themselves with other Capone enemies, especially the North Side Mob, the O'Banions, then under the control of Bugs Moran. Aiello carried the murder campaign against Capone to intriguing heights, once trying to persuade the chef of a favorite Capone restaurant, Diamond Joe Esposito's Bella Napoli Cafe, to put prussic acid in Capone's minestrone soup. Although the fee escalated from $10,000 to $35,000, the chef shrewdly figured that if the fatal recipe did the job, he would not live long enough to enjoy his money. He reported the poison plot to Big Al. The frustrated Aiello promptly spread the word that $50,000 awaited anyone who killed Capone.

These hostile efforts proved annoying to Capone and stoked his own determination that Aiello get his "real good."

One October evening Aiello stepped outside his expensive West Side apartment building, on North Kolmar Avenue, right into the cross fire of a sawed-off shotgun and two Thompson submachine guns. They dug 59 slugs weighing well over a pound out of the ventilated corpse.

Joe Adonis

Adonis, Joe (1902–1972):

Syndicate leader

One of the most powerful members of the national crime syndicate, Joe Adonis had been a longtime associate of such stalwart racket bosses as Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky. He headed up the Broadway Mob, the most powerful Prohibition bootleg gang in Manhattan.

While Adonis always claimed to have been born in the United States, he was, as the law finally determined in deportation hearings, actually born in Montemarano, Italy, on November 22, 1902. He had entered the country illegally and taken the name of Adonis (his real name was Doto) to pay himself proper homage for what he regarded as his handsome looks.

Like many of his youthful associates—Luciano, Vito Genovese and Albert Anastasia—he soared up the criminal ladder of success during the get-rich-quick days of Prohibition. By the late 1920s Adonis had moved the center of his operations to Brooklyn. He became the virtual boss of much of that borough's criminal activities, taking over the Frankie Yale interests after that leading gangster was assassinated in 1928. The key to Adonis's success appears to have been his loyalty and modest ambitions. He was one of the gunners who killed Joe the Boss Masseria, the murder that put Luciano only one killing away from becoming the foremost Italian-American syndicate leader in the nation.

In Brooklyn, Adonis moved on two fronts. He was a trusted member of the board of the syndicate, settling disputes between various criminal factions and issuing murder contracts. While Albert Anastasia, Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., carried out tasks assigned by Louis Lepke, Adonis was also Anastasia's superior and kept a tight rein on him. Otherwise the mad-hatter murder boss could well have run amok, ordering too many hits. Abe Reles, the informer in the Murder, Inc., case, told authorities: "Cross Joey Adonis and you cross the national combination."

While Adonis was active in purely criminal matters, he was also becoming a very influential figure in Brooklyn's political life. A restaurant he owned in downtown Brooklyn, Joe's Italian Kitchen, became a rendezvous point for the most eminent political figures in Brooklyn—as well as members of the underworld. Among those he courted was a county judge, William O'Dwyer, later district attorney and mayor of New York. Adonis was often seen conferring with O'Dwyer and James J. Moran, a venal assistant, later regarded as O'Dwyer's bagman.
When Luciano was sent away in prison, he left Frank Costello in charge of his own crime family and Adonis in nominal charge of the combination's affairs, but he told Adonis, "Cooperate with Meyer." Meyer was Meyer Lansky, who was to become the guiding genius of the syndicate. Adonis understood both his role and Lansky's and proved smart enough to take orders.

After the end of Prohibition, Adonis extended his interests over waterfront rackets both in Brooklyn and New Jersey and became a power in syndicate gambling enterprises as well. Despite the fact he had moved up to multimillionaire class, Adonis also masterminded a string of jewelry thefts. For a man in his position, it was foolhardy and an activity his bigwig associates viewed with considerable amusement. But Adonis was a thief at heart and happiest when handling an old-fashioned heist.

In 1944 Adonis moved the center of his activities to New Jersey and there presided over the affairs of the syndicate in what was to become a famous mob headquarters, Duke's Restaurant in Cliffside Park. The political and police situation in New Jersey had become far more hospitable than in Brooklyn, and Adonis readily switched from Democratic politics to Republican, the dominant power in Jersey.

Despite a long and dishonorable career in crime, Adonis avoided prison until 1951 when, in the aftermath of the Kefauver hearings, so much heat was generated that he was forced to plead guilty to violation of state gambling laws. He was hit with a two-year sentence. In 1956, pressed hard by the federal government and facing perjury charges, Adonis agreed to accept a deportation order once his foreign birth was established. Adonis lived out his days in lavish comfort in exile in Milan. Occasionally he met with Luciano who was in exile in Naples, but relationships between the two men deteriorated badly. Adonis was in far better financial shape than Luciano but pointedly never asked Lucky if there ever was anything he needed. More important, he did not aid Luciano's efforts to prevent Vito Genovese from making a play for preeminence in the Mafia in America.
By the 1960s the two men had more or less fallen out of touch. However, when Luciano died in 1962 Adonis procured permission from Italian authorities to attend a requiem mass for Lucky in Naples. Tears flowed down his cheeks as Adonis presented a final tribute to his old criminal leader: a huge floral wreath with the obligatory mob farewell, "So Long, Pal."

Anthony Joseph Accardo

Accardo, Anthony Joseph (1906–1992): Chicago mob leader
Although known to Chicago crime intimates as Tony, to lesser lieutenants as "Mr. Accardo," to syndicate supporters as having "more brains before breakfast than Al Capone had all day," Anthony Joseph Accardo slugged his way to syndicate power as "Joe Batters."

That Accardo rose to such heights is rather amazing considering his comparatively humble mob beginning. A young tough, Accardo served as an enforcer for Capone and established an early notoriety for his proficient use of the baseball bat. But, brainy and adroit, he knew how to balance brute force and velvet glove, a talent not overlooked by Capone.


When Big Al went to jail for a brief time in 1929, he named a triumvirate to rule in his place: Jake Guzik in charge of administration, Frank Nitti in operations, and Accardo as head of enforcement. Under Accardo were such brutal worthies as Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Tough Tony Capezio, Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt, Screwy John Moore, Red Forsyth and Jimmy Belcastro, the King of the Bombers. Accardo's stature grew when Capone was put away for good. In 1943, when Nitti committed suicide rather than go to prison, Accardo became the acknowledged head of the mob.

Over the years, Accardo shared power with his good friend Paul Ricca, one of the few underworld relationships that never resulted in any doublecrosses. Accardo was a firm believer in power sharing at the top, but strict obedience in the lower ranks.


Accardo and Ricca, a brilliant leader until his last senile years, extended Chicago's influence far beyond the Windy City, something Capone showed no inclination to do. It was Accardo as much as any one man who proclaimed Chicago's influence as far west and south of the city as California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Nevada, among other sunny sites. And the Eastern mobs made no protest, asking only that they also be
Accardo, Anthony Joseph (1906–1992): Chicago mob leader
Although known to Chicago crime intimates as Tony, to lesser lieutenants as "Mr. Accardo," to syndicate supporters as having "more brains before breakfast than Al Capone had all day," Anthony Joseph Accardo slugged his way to syndicate power as "Joe Batters."

That Accardo rose to such heights is rather amazing considering his comparatively humble mob beginning. A young tough, Accardo served as an enforcer for Capone and established an early notoriety for his proficient use of the baseball bat. But, brainy and adroit, he knew how to balance brute force and velvet glove, a talent not overlooked by Capone.

When Big Al went to jail for a brief time in 1929, he named a triumvirate to rule in his place: Jake Guzik in charge of administration, Frank Nitti in operations, and Accardo as head of enforcement. Under Accardo were such brutal worthies as Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Tough Tony Capezio, Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt, Screwy John Moore, Red Forsyth and Jimmy Belcastro, the King of the Bombers. Accardo's stature grew when Capone was put away for good. In 1943, when Nitti committed suicide rather than go to prison, Accardo became the acknowledged head of the mob.

Over the years, Accardo shared power with his good friend Paul Ricca, one of the few underworld relationships that never resulted in any doublecrosses. Accardo was a firm believer in power sharing at the top, but strict obedience in the lower ranks.

Accardo and Ricca, a brilliant leader until his last senile years, extended Chicago's influence far beyond the Windy City, something Capone showed no inclination to do. It was Accardo as much as any one man who proclaimed Chicago's influence as far west and south of the city as California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Nevada, among other sunny sites. And the Eastern mobs made no protest, asking only that they also be granted rights in Nevada and California. In exchange Chicago got juicy rewards in Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas.

Some writers have tended to downplay Chicago's importance, noting that it frequently does not have membership on the national commission that supposedly runs organized crime. What they fail to understand is that there are two national crime syndicates in the United States—Chicago and the rest. This influence was the achievement of Accardo and Ricca and has been extended by their successors, Sam Giancana and, especially, Joey Aiuppa.

Never one to concern himself too much with day-today matters, Accardo gladly brought a Ricca favorite, Sam Giancana, into a leadership role in the 1940s. Whenever he wished, Accardo stepped back in to take control. Eventually, Giancana became too hot and Accardo and Ricca had to return to active leadership in the mid-1960s. With Ricca's death in 1972, Accardo brought in an old gunman buddy, Joe Aiuppa, boss of the Cicero rackets, to run things, thus allowing Accardo a life of leisure in his 22-room mansion with its indoor pool, two bowling alleys, pipe organ and gold-plated bathroom fixtures (described as being worth a half a million dollars).

It would be wrong, however, to believe that his aloof ministering meant Accardo ever lost any of his hardness. Never forgetting his enforcer past, Accardo presided over the Chicago Outfit's relentless reign of brutality.
The fate of one William ''Action" Jackson, a collector for the mob who forgot who he was collecting for, bore the Accardo trademark. Found stripped naked and hanging by his chained feet from a meat hook in a Cicero basement, he had been beaten on the lower body and genitals with Accardo's trusty old weapon, a baseball bat, then carved up with a razor, his eyes burned out with a blowtorch. Following those tortures he was further dissected; he died, the coroner reported, not of his wounds but of shock. Pictures of the body were distributed later in mob circles as an admonishment against theft within the organization.

When Sam Giancana was assassinated in 1975, it was obvious that the move could only have been made with Accardo's approval, if it were a mob operation. A number of gangsters earnestly informed the press that Accardo was not behind the murder, that the Giancana killing was "a CIA operation all the way" to prevent him from revealing details of the agency's use of the underworld in a bizarre and childish Castro assassination plot.

Accardo, who looked upon the death sentence as a solution to pesky problems, was nonetheless known for his fairness, a characteristic that won him considerable affection from gangsters. Once, Jackie the Lackey Cerone complained to him that an old hit man buddy of his, Johnny Whales, had gone soft in the head and that the "Dagos" in the mob would knock him off. Cerone said he tried to reassure Whales that he had nothing to fear from Italians, that the mob had a great many "Jews and Pollacks also. I told him this but he was still afraid." Accardo, a firm believer in the old Capone tenet of multi-ethnic membership, was sympathetic and asked Cerone if he wanted Whales killed. Cerone said he liked Whales too much for that but assured Accardo he would have no more to do with Whales in the future. Accardo was said to have magnanimously accepted this view.
Noted as an excellent pool player, Accardo was once victimized in a $1,000 game by a pool hustler who had wedged up the table and then adjusted his technique accordingly to win the match. When the trick was spotted, Accardo accorded all the blame to himself. "Let the bum go," he ordered. "He cheated me fair and square."


By the late 1970s, Accardo had returned to a multimillionaire semi-retirement in which Joey Aiuppa was said to be joining in with Cerone to take over active leadership. However, there was no doubt that if the circumstances warranted, old Joe Batters would come back.

And he did return when the Outfit's Las Vegas empire fell apart and the top leadership went to prison. Accardo proceeded to juggle the remaining leaders' roles and gave mobsters new assignments as he saw fit, with never a word of objection from the admiring ranks. He continued to administer control right up till his death of natural causes in 1992.

He never served a night in jail.